


i know the end (and so do you).

by sootforbrains



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Sleepy Bois Inc
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Dynamic, Found Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28815144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sootforbrains/pseuds/sootforbrains
Summary: Tommy glanced up at Tubbo, feeling his heart shudder with the weight of it all, the weight of the hell they'd been thrown headfirst into. "Why are you smiling?"And Tubbo merely shrugged, his grin that of fading sunlight and dusky skies."Because I'm not alone."-In which Tommy and Tubbo wake up in the middle of an unknown forest with no memories aside from their names, and they quickly discover that they appear to be two of the last people on earth.
Relationships: Ranboo & Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Ranboo & Toby Smith | Tubbo, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit & Phil Watson
Comments: 30
Kudos: 230





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is going to be a pretty lengthy fic (that is, if burnout doesn't grip me before I can get all my thoughts out onto this website), so strap in! It'll be heavy with the found family dynamic, some angst, you know the drill. Also, I feel like this is worth mentioning--there's obviously not going to be any shipping in this fic, AT ALL. All of the relationships tagged are strictly platonic. There also isn't much by way of CW/TW's, so if you're worried about it, you're all good to go!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy!

_Do you feel safe, little boy?_

_You shouldn’t feel safe._

_Travel west, and perhaps you will rediscover what you lost._

_The Winged Man will gaze upon you with dreary, saddened eyes, for he will not like what you've gotten yourself into._

_But he will be there for you when you fall._

__

__

Go west, child.

Go west.

-

Something had crushed him in the middle of the night.

Tommy came to with a jolt. His leg was pinned beneath something heavy and leaden, and the first thing that grasped and shook his consciousness was the fact that agony was clawing at him fervently.

He bit his lip, hissing as he struggled to sit up, tried to get the bearings of his surroundings. And what his surroundings appeared to be were quite confusing; he was encased in what appeared to be colored canvas. It fell around him like some homicidal curtain, strangling him, laying itself across his line of sight. He threw out his arms and batted it away, swallowing back the panic that was suddenly rising within him.

It occurred to him a moment later that he was in a tent.

_And something had fallen on top of him._

He tried moving his right leg; pain scraped dually at his bones, made him cry out. He was pinned.

“Shit.”

He battered away the canvas, trying to reach forward toward the horrid, foreign thing that had infiltrated his compass of comfort. His fingers groped something hard on the other side of the tent, and it registered in his mind that the texture was rough. Coarse, like a tree’s bark.

A branch.

“Fuck.” He reached forward as best he could and attempted to shove the stubborn log off of himself, twisting against the painful way his leg had been pinned. His head throbbed with the reverberations of his leg’s protests, and pain was searing its way, red hot, all throughout his bottom half. He gritted his teeth and clawed desperately at the branch. It felt as if he were trying to push away an immovable force, as if a mountain had suddenly decided to sprout itself atop his body.

“Tommy?”

A voice from beside him.

Tommy felt a gasp escape him, shaky and desperate. “Tubbo."

Movement from beyond the canvas shrouding his vision, the scraping of skin upon a sleeping bag. “Tommy?” Tubbo repeated, his voice as uncertain as the breeze in spring. “Tommy, what’s--”

“Tubbo, help.” Tommy heard his voice break, and spots began to swim across his eyes, taunting him with their colors. He kept pushing against the stubborn thing, but it was becoming harder and harder to move. The pain was practically scraping at his face, picking at his mind with its harsh words. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to bear it much longer. It had erased any thought from his mind, and replaced it with pure red.

“Oh, God.” The canvas beside Tommy suddenly lifted, and here was Tubbo, hair wild with sleep, eyes still drowsy from the night before. However, they widened at the sight of the Tommy’s strained expression, at the way his body was twisted unnaturally with the entrapment of his leg. It was then that Tubbo’s eyes fell upon the thing upon Tommy’s leg.

“Is that--”

“A branch,” Tommy gasped. He could feel consciousness slipping away from him, tugging at him sadistically, almost playfully. “God, fuck, Tubbo, _HELP!_ ”

“Okay, okay. Hold still.” Tubbo reached forward and, without thinking, tossed his slight weight against the branch holding Tommy hostage. At first, it did nothing; whatever was on the other end of this tent was large, behemoth, and had a vendetta against Tommy. But then, just as Tommy began to slip back into a world of unconsciousness in an attempt to escape the scraping of his bones, the branch began to budge.

“We’re almost there,” Tubbo urged, as Tommy’s vision swam. He felt his hand slip off of the branch, and he began to tip backward, hurtling directly toward that comforting abyss.

“Tubbo….” He felt it escape his lips, but how could he be sure he’d actually said something? He could feel his stomach churning, the world around him shutting its door, allowing him to escape between its lines of reality once more.

But then he heard Tubbo let out one final grunt, and the branch slid off of his leg as smoothly as a toy falling off of a little kid’s shelf.

Almost immediately, there was relief. Tommy fell back onto his pillow, his sleeping bag, and let out a long, horrid groan.

“Tommy.” He heard Tubbo skitter next to him, felt his friend’s warm hands upon his cheeks. The canvas fluttered down around them; the branch had apparently snapped the tent’s supports. Tommy took comfort in the feeling of Tubbo’s palms on his face; warm, dry, and real. It felt strange, for some particular reason, to have somebody touch him again.

Human contact felt unnatural.

But before he could grasp that thought and ponder it--for it was probably something he should’ve pondered, because that might’ve been something to unpack--it slipped away from him, replaced with the overwhelming throbbing emitting from his wounded leg. A strange fear struck him, then; he didn’t want to look at what the branch had done.  
“Tubbo,” he said, and his voice came out like a frog’s croak, soft and filled with holes. “Tubbo, is my….is my leg….?”

There was shuffling. Tubbo’s face was hidden by a fold of canvas, and for whatever reason, this only made Tommy’s already racing heart beat faster.

“Good news,” he heard Tubbo say, “your leg is still attached to you.”

“Oh, good.” Tommy let his head fall back onto the pillow, stared up at the dangling canvas.

“But….”

“But what?”

“It’s….it’s not looking good.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Tommy sat up, slowly but determined, suddenly fueled by the overwhelming need to see.

“No, don’t move, Tommy, I don’t think you’re--”

Tommy swatted away the tent’s material and came face to face with his right leg.

As soon as he laid eyes on the way his leg was beginning to swell, the way the purplish-black was already seeping over his skin, escaping the fabric of his pants, the pain returned to him tenfold. It washed over him in a wave, unpleasantly poking at his stomach and flooding it with a nausea he was sure he’d never felt before, infecting his brain with nothing but broken nerve-endings, sparking like faulty wires.

He wasn’t aware that he’d let out a cry until Tubbo was next to him again, rosy cheeks swimming in and out of view, asking him, over and over, “Tommy, are you alright? Tommy, are you--”

“Get me out.” He managed to spit it between his lips like a seed. He wanted to throw up. He needed to throw up. “Get me out of this tent, I need to…”

He couldn’t finish, but Tubbo had already seized his shoulders and was attempting to drag Tommy’s lengthy form out of the tent’s interior. It took a long moment, but soon enough Tubbo had managed to pull Tommy out from beneath the tent’s organs and into the fresh, painfully bright morning air.

Tommy let himself twist away from Tubbo, and--as gracefully as he could--tossed up what was left within his stomach onto the ground before him. Nausea gripped him by the shoulders for a moment longer, and he collapsed onto his back and let his eyes rest upon the canopy of leaves and crisscrossing branches above him. The patchwork of sky beyond was shaded a clear, crisp blue; in the distance, birds were chirping gleefully.

There was a moment of silence, a beat suspended within the breath of that morning, in which he simply laid on his back and studied the forest around him.

 _Something was wrong_.

Beside him, Tubbo had begun to fidget. He could hear the frantic tapping of Tubbo’s fingernails on his watch.

There was one more beat of silence--of peace--and then Tubbo said, “Tommy?”

“Yeah?”

“This is going to sound weird, but….I….I can’t remember anything about last night.”

Tommy began to scoff (because for some reason, this was a default reaction, something that had been ingrained in him by some unbeknownst source in his childhood), but then he stopped.

Froze.

And he thought, really thought, for the first time that morning.

He soon discovered that beyond the searing pain of that morning, he remembered nothing.

_Your first memories are of pain._

“I can’t remember anything,” Tubbo continued, and Tommy could hear the rising panic in his voice, flooding his tone with a bubbling, specific sort of fear. It was strange, this feeling; it was as if the woods had stopped itself in its tracks, as if someone had dragged the needle across the gramophone and ordered the lights to come up upon the audience. As if the morning had suddenly turned its head upon the pair of them, and all of the animals were to come out of their hiding places and stand up on two legs, revealing themselves to be people in costumes all along.

It was the feeling of revelation, of an exalting discovery that was so horrible you couldn’t look it directly in its crooked expression.

“Tommy? Tommy.” Suddenly, Tubbo had seized his arm, and when Tommy turned his head to look at his friend, Tubbo’s eyes were wide with horror, a wild expression of terror dominating the soft features lining his face. Tommy could see a million faces of coarse desperation within those eyes, and it only made the pit in his stomach go deeper. The pain in his leg seemed to cease to exist entirely, but it was replaced with an existential dread unlike anything Tommy had ever known.

“Tommy. Please tell me….what happened? What happened to me? Why can’t I remember?” Tubbo began to shake Tommy, his fingers digging into the skin there with a biting ferocity. Tommy winced, but didn’t say anything.

“Did I hit my head? Did I...did I…” He stopped, trailed off. Tommy could see the tears welling in his friend’s eyes, but for some reason, he was frozen. Speechless. Paralyzed with the horror of it all.

Think, Tommy.

“Tubbo, I…” He trailed off. Tubbo had snapped his mouth shut, and was staring at Tommy with a wild, grasping hope. Tell me what is happening, those pleading eyes said. Tommy blinked. He let his mind reach, but it grasped weakly. Everything before the pain of this morning was…. _darkness._

“Tommy?”

“I don’t know.” Tommy let himself attempt to sit up, and as he did, the world snapped into place with a dizzying veracity. The woods no longer seemed peaceful and inviting, but ominously real.

“I don’t know either, Tubbo.”

“Oh.” Tubbo sat back on his heels and bit his lip. It was a horrible sound, that “oh.” He ran a hand through his wildly dark head of hair, and took a shaky breath. The pain in Tommy’s leg had subsided, for now; but he was focused on more pressing matters.

“Why….you don’t remember anything?” Tommy looked pointedly at Tubbo. Dread began whispering sweetly in his ear, coaxing him into what would surely be the most violent panic attack of his life. “We...why don’t we remember anything?”

Tubbo was shaking his head, as if assuring himself of something. “No, no, there’s gotta be some….we’d remember why we’d come out here in the middle of the woods. We’d remember setting up this tent. We’d remember….” He stopped very suddenly, and Tommy saw his eyes widen horribly.

“What? We’d remember what, Tubbo?”

Tubbo turned a shaky gaze upon him. “Do you remember your family?”

This caused a sudden and unpleasant lurch to wrack Tommy’s insides, and he very nearly wretched once again. For he couldn’t remember his family.

He couldn’t remember his home.

His friends.

His favorite movie.

He couldn’t remember if he’d _had_ a family.

He gripped at the sparse grass peeking up from the soil, and stretched his mind out like a towel, wringing it out, beating it with imaginary fists. But things simply weren’t materializing like they were supposed to in his memory.

“The only thing I remember,” Tubbo said slowly, after a moment of silence as the both of them considered their unfortunate positions, “is your name, and my name. I’m 17, you’re 16. And….we’re good friends. I know that.”

Tommy nodded. This fact was present in his mind, too.

But there was nothing else.

\---------

He’d told himself that his memories would return to him eventually.

It was the thing he and Tubbo had agreed on, as they’d begun to accept this new reality of theirs (but was it really “new,” if it was technically the only thing they ever remembered knowing?); that as time wore on, and they started to get their bearings a bit more, their memories would slowly return. That the important things, at least, would surely come back to them; the names of their parents, for example. Or if they had parents at all. Tommy was sure he and Tubbo weren’t brothers, but that was about as far as it went in the family memories department.

_Did he have a brother? Multiple? A sister?_

_Did he have parents?_

As the morning wore on, the panic passing between the two boys began to subside a bit, as they pushed it aside to focus on more pressing matters. Tommy’s leg, for instance; their tent had pretty much been compromised by the wrath of the branch, and so Tubbo helped Tommy prop himself up on a nearby tree. The branch itself lay thwarted beside the tent, as Tubbo had managed to drag it all the way off. Tommy found himself staring at it contemptuously: _how dare you fuck up my perfectly good leg, you bitch._

As Tubbo worked--digging through the supplies they had in the tent, for neither of them could remember what they’d brought, of course--Tommy glanced down at himself and studied his clothes. A worn baseball tee. Khakis. Beaten-down pair of sneakers that hung loosely on his feet. Tubbo’s dress was quite similar, except his button-down was skewed and his shoes looked far too big for his feet. Tommy wondered where they’d both acquired such clothing.

He also wondered what on earth could’ve caused such a severe fit of amnesia. And for the both of them? It seemed uncanny.

“This is some fucked up shit,” he kept saying, as Tubbo dragged their sleeping bags out from beneath the tent’s collapsed canvas.

Tubbo nodded in agreement, but replied with, “I don’t think we brought a First-Aid kit.”

“Well.” Tommy twisted his lips into a frown. “That’s fuckin’ irresponsible.”

“I know.” Tubbo dove back into the tent and emerged with a duffel bag. He held it up above his head triumphantly, like he’d discovered treasure. Grinning, he said, “Jackpot, maybe?”

“Open it.” Tommy’s leg was beginning to throb again, now that the adrenaline of their situation had worn off. It was a horrid mixture of pain and fear, this was, and he didn’t care for it one bit.

He watched as Tubbo, carefully, unzipped the duffel bag and peer inside. After a moment, he let out a breathless laugh, and said, “It’s food. It’s food!”

“What kind?” Tommy leaned forward as best he could.

“Crisps, mostly.” Tubbo sighed. “Nothing that will sustain us for long, if we…” He trailed off, but he didn’t have to finish.

It was a horrible thought, that. That thing that was dancing on the tip of Tubbo’s tongue.

Tommy gritted his teeth, and leaned back against the trunk of his tree. “Nothing that looks like paracetamol, or….anything, really?”

Tubbo shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid not.”

“Fuck.”

For the next half hour or so, Tubbo rummaged, and Tommy watched. He attempted to distract himself from the throbbing in his leg, but what is one to think about when there are no memories to distract yourself?

He lost himself in trying to remember.

_My mom and dad, they must be so worried._

_But did he even have a mom and a dad?_

_Someone will come looking for us, won’t they?_

_Was there even a someone out there?_

_I’m 16._

_Yes._

_My name is Tommy._

_Yes, that’s right._

_My best friend is Tubbo._

_Right again._

_Where did I come from?_

_Who am I?_

_Why am I here?_

He felt his chest begin to tighten with the weight of it all, and he could feel the bubble of his heart threaten to burst. He imagined how fucked that would be, if his heart burst up out of his chest and out into his lap. That wasn’t a great thought to be entertaining, not when his leg kept hissing at him whenever he moved.

“Tommy!”

He glanced up, and--to his immediate and utter relief--saw that Tubbo was holding up a metal box with a red cross painted meekly on the front.

“Oh, thank fuck.” Tommy shifted, anxious. “Are there any painkillers?”

“Dunno.” Tubbo approached him, set the box down beside him and flipped it open. He rummaged through bandages, patches, various bottles of cream, until finally--

“Here we go.” He held up a bottle of paracetamol. It was nothing much, really, but it gave Tommy an overwhelming sense of normalcy. A pill bottle from a world beyond the woods, a world in which pharmacies ran their 24-hour clinics underneath flickering fluorescent lights.

Tubbo dumped three of the pills into Tommy’s outstretched palm, and Tommy swallowed them dry. He leaned his head back against the trunk of the tree and groaned, probably for the millionth time that morning. “Was that all that was in the tent?”

“I...I’m afraid so.” Tubbo grimaced, then reached for Tommy’s leg. “Can I look at it?”

Tommy waved at him to go ahead, and so Tubbo tugged carefully at the material, pulling it upwards as slowly and as carefully as possible. Tommy bit his lip against a cry of pain; even Tubbo’s slight touch was enough to send him reeling. He hoped desperately the pills would kick in soon.

“Fuck, I...I don’t know how to do this.” Tubbo let out a breathy, nervous laugh. “I don’t even know what’s wrong with it."

“Is it broken?” Tommy glanced down at the purplish-black mess that had become of his mid-shin. The pain reared up again and he quickly cut his eyes away.

“I don’t know!” Tubbo brought out a roll of Ace bandages from the First-Aid kit. “But...I mean, aren’t you supposed to splint it? Like make sure it stays still so that it can heal?”

“Then fuckin’ splint it, man!”

“I don’t know how!”

“Well, try!”

“Bro, there’s no- there’s nothing in here to splint it with.” 

Tubbo smacked the First-Aid kit, exasperated. He turned his gaze away from Tommy, grasping at the roll of bandages and unrolling it with a little too much force. Tommy felt himself shrivel with a touch of guilt.

“We’re going to have to find our way out of here,” Tubbo said, slowly, calmly, and Tommy could feel the walls of his mind pressing forward, beginning to move toward his sanity with the ever-growing notion that they were truly fucked. “We’re going to have to find civilization, or…something. The nearest town.”

“Where do you think that is?” Tommy gestured weakly to his right, then to his left. The trees here appeared to be endless, the forest stretching beyond them and disappearing into the unknown.

“I don’t know.” Tubbo looked up, and Tommy could see the beginnings of tears prickling in his friend’s eyes. Tommy’s heart lurched.

You don’t like it when people cry.

“Hey.” Tommy reached forward and nudged Tubbo’s shoulder. “Don’t do that, big man. We’re probably not as fucked as we think we are, yeah?"

Tubbo cut his eyes away, back down to the bandages he was fiddling with.

“We’re….probably not even that far away from anywhere.” Tommy let himself chuckle, and found that chuckling felt better than dwelling on anything negative. “It’s stupid, when you think about it. I mean, maybe we’re prone to amnesia. Maybe we’re like the town amnesiacs and we wandered off into the woods and forgot what we were doing. I bet they’ll be sending a search party after us soon.”

Tommy could feel the impending doom subsiding, chased away by meaningless fantasies, fictional notions made up in order to subdue the inevitable. But Tubbo still wouldn’t meet his gaze. Very softly, he said, “I think we both know that’s not true, Tommy.”

A silence fell over them.

After a moment, Tubbo set down the roll of bandages, and glanced up at his friend. There was no sign of those tears that had been present earlier. No sign of any sort of vulnerable emotion at all. It was unsettling to Tommy, seeing such resolve in a face that was clearly not meant for feeling such things.

“I’m gonna have to go,” he said, and Tommy felt his heart sink. “I’m gonna have to go on my own and try to find help.”

“But-”

“No.” Tubbo shook his head, and smiled softly. “It’s okay. I can handle it.”

“But can you?” Tommy’s tone was harsher than he’d intended it to be. He saw the reflection of a flinch in Tubbo’s shoulders. In a softer voice, he said, “Tubbo, we don’t know anything about ourselves.”

“All the more reason to get help.” With this, Tubbo stood, and trudged back toward the abandoned tent. Tommy watched him go, let his fingers dig into the soft earth beside him. He glanced toward the First-Aid kit, and pulled it toward him halfheartedly. It occurred to him that it was quite bad that neither of them knew anything about First-Aid, especially when Tommy’s leg was of both concerning color and texture. And also considering the fact that they were in the middle of nowhere.

And that their memories had both deserted them for the worse.

But what could you do?

“Tommy?"

He glanced up. Tubbo was standing with his shoes pressed down on the tent’s deflated canvas, staring down at something metal glinting between his fingers.

“Yeah?” Tommy squinted. He couldn’t tell what it was from where he was sitting.  
But Tubbo held it up toward him, and it became evident very quickly that it was some sort of compass. “What is this?"

It winked at him in the sunlight, sending a shimmer of sparks flashing in his eyes. As Tubbo brought it over to him, he could see that it was gold and ornate, beautifully crafted with carved designs built into the frame. The needle quivered.

“I think that’s called a compass, big man.” Tommy looked up at Tubbo with a knowing smile. Perhaps Tubbo’s memory had been affected more so than his own had.

“No, I know what it is.” Tubbo flashed him a furrowed brow. “I’m saying...it’s got your name on the back."

He flipped it over, and sure enough--carved deftly into the gold on the back of the thing--was T O M M Y.

“It’s yours,” said Tubbo, and handed it to him.

Tommy took it softly, turned it over in his hands. It was cold with the morning air, its gold soft against his rough hands. He expected it to incite some sort of emotion within him--perhaps it would’ve sparked all of his lost memories to return to him in a rush that would knock him over--but all he felt was its cool surface.

“Do you recognize it?” said Tubbo.

Tommy shook his head. He flipped it over and ran his thumb over the neat carving of his name in the back of it. TOMMY.

Flipping it back over, he sighed. “I don’t recognize it, man.”

“Look.” Tubbo’s hand shot forward, and he gestured at the compass’s surface. “Look, the needle isn’t….that’s not pointing north.”

Tommy furrowed his brow, moved the compass around so that the arrow wiggled. He glanced up at Tubbo. “How do you know?”

Tubbo grabbed the compass from Tommy and marched purposefully out into the middle of the clearing. He looked up at the sky, shielded his eyes from the sunlight with the back of his hand. He pointed upward. “There,” he said, “is where the sun is now. It’s morning, so it’s rising, yeah?”

“Yeah, I know how the sun works.”

“Okay, so that means that way--” Tubbo turned and pointed. “--would be north. But the needle--” He turned again, and pointed in another direction. “--is pointing…..west.”

“Well….that’s not right.”

Tubbo turned and gave him a blank expression. “So you get it.”

It seems we’re both able to remember scientific knowledge, but what was the limit?

Tommy shrugged. “Yeah. But how does that help us?”

Tubbo glanced down at the compass, then back up at Tommy. There was something lodged in his eyes, then, that looked like determination. Or he was already starting to lose his mind, if there was any of it left to lose.

“What if I follow the arrow?” he said, and held it up toward the sun, examining it further. “What if it leads toward civilization?”

Tommy scoffed. “That’s dumb.”

“No, it’s not.” Tubbo gave him a pointed look. “Can you really be sure if anything’s dumb? What if this was its exact purpose?”

Tommy clamped his mouth shut, thought about it. Tubbo had a point. Hell, it was apparently his compass, and he couldn’t even remember receiving it.

“Exactly.” Tubbo approached the tent and brought out a backpack--completely empty, judging by the flat look of it.

Tommy felt his stomach sink suddenly, for he knew what his friend was about to attempt. “Hey,” he said, “hey, whoa, whoa, you don’t have to--”

He stopped. Tubbo looked up at him, and all of the emotion had been erased from his face. He looked tough. Perhaps this was how he was always meant to look.

Perhaps he had never meant to look like this at all.

It was a strange thought, this loss of memory. For in theory it was cruel, cold and biting to its pursuers. Tommy certainly felt the cruelty of it all, leaning against this trunk, watching his best friend prepare to venture out into an unknown woods with nothing but a faulty compass as his guide. He felt it as he realized he would be left alone with his crippled leg, and he felt it as he thought about the disorientation he’d felt in that tent when the canvas had descended around him like a serial killer’s wire to strangle him.

“I’ll be back,” said Tubbo, standing at the edge of the clearing. He was peering out into the woods uncertainly, and for the first time that morning, Tommy could feel real fear--not the wooly, panicky kind, but the cold, weighted kind that settled in the bottom of your stomach and made you want to scream--blanket his insides.

“Be careful,” he said--he pleaded this.

And off Tubbo went, into an unknown and forgotten world.


	2. A Bee and a Shotgun

There were three things that Tubbo kept repeating to himself.

They were like a mantra, and they slipped from his lips like some lost prophet looking for their god. As his shoes snapped twigs and crunched upon dead leaves, he let his words wash over him and did his best to take comfort in them.

_Your name is Tubbo._

_Tommy is your friend._

_You are going to be okay._

The wilderness stretched before him like an endless painting, as if some landscape artist had been given an eternal canvas and decided to create some sick and twisted forest in which kids woke up without their memories. Tubbo kept the compass held steadily before him, watching as the arrow quivered toward an unnatural direction. It was lucky that whatever day it was, whatever year it was, that it was sometime in the early autumn, for the trees were stripping themselves around him, and it was easier to see between them. 

_Your name is Tubbo._

He tried to tell himself that he was some sort of adventurer, some Indiana Jones-type traveler on a mission to retrieve some sort of treasure. That this acute loss of memory was some way the bad guy had tried to thwart his mission. It was easy to pretend, because, really, who was to say he was wrong? He didn’t know who he was, therefore he could technically be anyone.

_Tommy is your friend._

He felt like he’d been walking for hours, but he knew deep down that his sense of time was skewed more than it probably should’ve been. It was prolonged by the nagging fear that he was going to get lost despite the compass, and that he wouldn’t be able to find his way back to Tommy, that Tommy would end up dying alone, and Tubbo would meet the same fate, somewhere else, both of them victim to the eternity of this woods.

_You are going to be okay._

And it was strange, this void he found himself in. For one, he might’ve been glad. Perhaps something horrible had happened to him, and this erasure of his memory was some kind of gift from an all-powerful being. But on the other hand, his parents were probably worried sick. His friends were probably consulting with each other desperately. More than likely he’d left many people behind, and it was going to tug at him horribly when he eventually returned to them and wasn’t able to put names to their faces.  
That was something he tried horribly to shove down, along with all the other dark thoughts banging around in his head.

He was beginning to feel very lost.

The woods rustled around him with the breeze of the morning. The birds’ gleeful chirping had subsided some time ago, and now he was met with nothing but a comfortable silence. It would’ve bee ominous, if he’d let it be, but he wasn’t going to let himself be afraid by the lack of noise. He’d be much more concerned if there was noise; for example, the footsteps of a fast-approaching bear.

_Your name is--_

The sound of dead leaves crunching beneath his shoes had stopped. He’d begun to walk on grass, soft and green as meadows in a childrens’ book. 

He glanced up, expecting to see more woods.

Instead, he came face to face with an image that almost caused him to weep with mere relief. For sprawling before and below him was the dotted browns and blacks and greens of a town, small and compact, like a remote dwelling in an old-fashioned 80s movie. He was standing upon a hill which rose above it all, giving him a bird’s-eye view of the best thing he’d ever seen in his life.

That he could remember, of course.

A smile spread over his lips as he began to descend the grassy hill, carefully so as not to slip, rushing toward the town as fast as he dared. There were no signs of life yet, but that was alright. He’d surely find someone in the first supermarket he saw, or better yet, the police station. The police station, he decided, yes, of course. There would be people there who could tell him who he was, for surely he was from this particular town--or at the very least, somewhere around here. And of course, surely there was some adult figure in his life, in Tommy’s, some maternal being tearing down everything in its path, like the way parents were supposed to in order to find their children. 

_You are going to be okay._

He reached the bottom of the hill, and now the town was shrouded by another, small patch of woods. There was a road cutting through them, winding through the trees like a river of asphalt. Tubbo approached it and began walking alongside it, ears perked readily for the sound of a car approaching. For surely the driver would see him, stop and ask what he was doing, what’s a kid like you doing on the side of the road? Surely he would be saved. 

Hope was blossoming within him, now, filling him up like a balloon and allowing him to move quickly, steadily toward civilization. The way was a lot longer than it had looked from the top of the hill, but that was all right. He didn’t mind, as long as at the other end, there was help.

And it was such a wonderful word, “help.” It was a wonderful flower bud at the tip of his mind, taking his hand and rushing him forward. He was practically jogging, imagining the welcome he’d surely receive when he stumbled into the police station. He imagined what his parents must look like, their worried expressions melting instantly into relief. 

Because surely he had parents.

And surely they were looking for him.

Perhaps he and Tommy would be on the news. Perhaps they’d been missing for far longer than they’d originally thought, and the heroic Tubbo had finally turned up after all hope had seemed to be lost. Maybe they’d write books about him.

Maybe his memory would return.

He kept following the road. The sound of an approaching car’s tires never came, but that was all right. It was still quite early, he thought. Perhaps it was a Saturday, and everyone was sleeping in.

There was a sign ahead of him, now, planted firmly in the dirt, big and green and welcoming as ever. Tubbo stopped just before it, and peered up at it curiously. 

The letters had faded, and chipped, and graffitied over, but he could just make out the words: WELCOME TO .

The name of the town had been scratched out.

“Welcome to Blank,” he said to himself, and then chuckled giddily. The sign sparked nothing in his mind, but again, that was all right. He’d found civilization.

Tubbo continued walking, about a mile more, maybe two, he didn’t know, until finally, he reached buildings, sparse and low and inviting, and a long stretch of sidewalk and storefronts and downtown.

_Welcome to the town with no name._

Tubbo let himself stop, for disbelief had begun to wash over him, prickling at his mind with an annoyingly sharp finger. 

_Well, this can’t be right._

For even though he was walking slowly through what was almost surely the downtown area, there was not a soul in sight.

Streets stretched before him, intertwining like yarn. The storefronts lining the cracked sidewalk were all dark, their windows glaring at him like he was an unwelcome visitor in their very prestigious club meeting. Trash fluttered against the wind, stuck in gutters. Cars, all seemingly abandoned, were parked at the edges of the main road. 

He shoved down the panic that was beginning to pull at him again, that same panic that had nipped at his heels in the woods. He thought quickly of Tommy, laying alone against the tree with his fucked-up leg and drowsy blue eyes. 

“No,” he said aloud, and was surprised at how meek his voice was. He didn’t like that. He needed it to be stronger, more firm, more sure.

He needed to be stronger.

Turning, he pressed his face against the window of the nearest storefront, peering inside. It was an antique shop, and the lights had been cut inside. It was so dark that Tubbo could barely make out the rows of shelves and cluttered items beyond his own reflection in the window. Moving quickly, he tried the door. Locked. 

He stumbled backward, and gazed all around him wildly. Maybe it was a ghost town. Maybe his luck was so horrendously bitter that the closest town just happened to be one that had been left to rot in its entirety. 

An eerie chill washed over him as he started forward again, searching wildly for any movement, any sign of life whatsoever. The street seemed to leer at him, to smile crookedly at his misfortune. You were searching for help? it seemed to say, taunting him with its barren sidewalks and trash-littered main road, _what a fool you are, Tubbo. Only fools search for help in the most abandoned of settlements._

Only fools stumble around, wide-eyed, balking at their predicament.

Only fools leave their friend stranded in some random woods with a crippled leg.

Only fools lose are dumb enough to not remember their fucking family. 

Tubbo felt like curling up into a ball and burying himself into the concrete. He continued walking, but there was still no movement. 

Desperation grasped him, suddenly, and he ran quickly away from the sidewalk and out into the middle of the road, where no cars were driving. He stopped in the right turn lane of an emptied intersection, and he turned and gazed up at the stoplights, expecting them to have gone dark with abandonment, for surely nobody here was still running the power.

But to his shock, the stoplight was in the middle of flashing from green to yellow, then--as if to taunt him even more--from yellow to red. Telling imaginary cars to stop, to wait for the imaginary cars adjacent to go on their imaginary way. 

_Abandoned. No one here._

A scream built up within Tubbo’s throat, and before he could stop himself, it ripped out of him like a bullet. 

_“HELLOOOO????”_

His voice echoed eerily down the empty streets, coming back to slap him in the face with their futile efforts to call people to him. Hopelessness tugged at his heart, threatening to swallow him whole. He fell to his knees in the middle of the road, his jeans hitting the white paint of the turn lane, and tried to ward off the oncoming panic attack, the oncoming void of the darkness swallowing him whole. 

“HELLOOO?!!!” he called again, and he knew it was useless before he even finished. Yet he still let the word tear his vocal chords to shreds. He still let his desperation ring out along these empty streets. “IS ANYONE OUT THERE?! I NEED HELP!!!!!”

But no help came.

Around him, the town stretched before him, looming, leering. It was inviting, but for all the wrong reasons, like a painted smile on a murderous clown. His logical mind told him that surely, this town wasn’t as deserted as it appeared to be. His logical mind whispered to him, telling him that if he only kept looking, that if he overturned enough stones and called out enough times, that somebody would come.

But the longer he kneeled in the street, staring down at the painted blacktop as if it would draw him the answers, the more his situation became very, very real.

It seemed that he and Tommy were the last people left on earth.

“That’s not true,” he whispered, but the signs were clear, no matter how absurd the concept seemed. And who was Tubbo to judge what was plausible and what wasn’t? For all he knew, he and Tommy could’ve missed the entirety of the apocalypse. 

That’s not a very good thought. 

It wasn’t, not at all. But for whatever reason, it replaced Tubbo’s sense of hopelessness with something less potent, something more pure and energetic than the force that had driven him to his knees. If he and Tommy truly were the last two left on earth, then it was solely up to Tubbo to get help.

And it was the thought of Tommy dying alone in those woods that brought Tubbo back up to his feet, that got him to start forward, trudging through the middle of the emptied intersection and toward the center of town. 

His first instinct told him that he needed to find a pharmacy. Perhaps the apocalypse had taken and smothered all of the people, but maybe it had left some of the supplies alone in its wake. He wandered down what appeared to have been the main strip of the downtown area, searching for something that presented itself to him as a pharmacy. For awhile, he had no luck; it was simply him and the sound of his footsteps on the blacktop, as the uncannily blue sky stretched comically large--as if he were in some sort of cheesy cartoon--overhead. The shops stared blankly at him, giving him a cool, contemplated look up and down before he moved on past them: _you don’t belong here, kid._

_I don’t seem to belong anywhere._

His legs were tired, but Tommy’s pained expression, plastered at the forefront of his mind’s eye, kept him going. He hoped to God there were no predators lurking within those woods, and if there were, that they only came out at night. He hoped he hadn’t left his best--more accurately, now, his only friend--for dead.

Finally, he decided to turn a corner, taking a detour down a side street. He found himself wishing there was somebody here he could get directions from. He passed dozens of darkened storefronts, and all of them presented him with his wild reflection; a wide-eyed boy with a bird’s nest of brown hair and a button-down shirt that had gotten grimy over the night. Trash littered the road; cars were parked alongside the sidewalk, utterly abandoned.

_Ghost town._

He was about ready to give up when there it suddenly was, jeering out at him from an unsuspecting street corner like the North Star to the Wise Men: JOHNSON DRUG.

“Oh, thank God.” Tubbo rushed forward, gripping the straps of his backpack. He approached the door and tried the handle, expecting it to be locked. To his surprise, however, the glass door pulled loose as easily as if it were expecting him. 

Tubbo frowned. There was something eerie about this notion of the unlocked door, as if Johnson or whoever was in charge of the drug store hadn’t quite gotten around to locking up. 

That, and he’d also been sort of looking forward to perhaps hurling a rock through a window. He’d supposed it’d make him feel badass, or something. 

He entered the pharmacy cautiously; the only light emitted from the sunlight beaming through the dusty windows, illuminating the shelves with a yellow, dusty sort of light. Tubbo made a beeline for the first-aid section, doing his best to search for something--anything--that would be of service to Tommy. 

On his way, he passed by a shelf of stuffed animals. 

One of these furry friends in particular caught his attention; on the middle shelf, just below Tubbo’s eye level, was a stuffed bee, poking out between the wire mesh of the shelf and smiling dizzily up at him. Its cartoonish eyes were wide and innocent, and its wings were flopped haphazardly on either side of its puffy back. 

It struck Tubbo with something that might have been nostalgia, or it might have been simple longing. Longing for what, Tubbo wasn’t sure. Perhaps his childhood. 

But how could he long for something he didn’t even know? 

Regardless, he plucked up the stuffed bee--it wasn’t much bigger than a box of tissues--and clutched it to his chest, hoping it would provide him with some sort of comfort.

In the first-aid section, he searched aimlessly throughout all of the pills and potions and bandages and remedies. It struck him as odd that all of this was simply sitting here, practically begging to be taken. Surely, if the apocalypse had brought its wrath upon the world, there would’ve been a mad scramble to this section of the drug stores. Surely there would have been at least a few, feeble signs of ransacking. 

Regardless, Tubbo wasn’t one to pass something important like this up. 

But as he reached for what he thought to be a bottle of peroxide, there came a crash from the front of the store.

He froze, and felt a frigid and intoxicating fear wash over him. His grasp on the bee tightened, and he felt his breath quiver in his lungs. 

There was someone here with him.

He tried to wrap his mind around the fact that he wasn’t alone, that perhaps he and Tommy weren’t the last men standing after all, but it wasn’t relief that came to him, in that moment. It was a cold and dark dread that settled within him, caused him to go as still as a statue. He had the dreadful premonition that whatever had followed him into the pharmacy--if he was being followed--wasn’t nice.

_Who was there?_

Then--just as Tubbo moved to creep backward, toward the counter where the drug-man gave out the prescriptions, to hide, to do anything except stand exposed out in the open--there came large and heavy footsteps, clamping down onto the store’s carpet as if they were trying to smother something. Tubbo let out an involuntary noise, then clapped a hand over his mouth, fear shooting an arrow through his chest; he prayed desperately that it hadn’t been that loud, that whoever was there hadn’t heard him.

His mind whirled dangerously with possibilities, each one of them more horrible than the last. A serial killer. Some radioactive-ridden monster that was once a man, out for blood. Or, even worse, a zombie with dangling flesh and meaty-red, hungry eyes. 

_Run. Get out of there._

He tried to make his feet move, but they were petrified in the sloshiness of his fear. It was holding him hostage, his terror, and he found himself squeezing his eyes shut, praying to something unknown that whatever was there wouldn’t find him. 

_Run._

_Get out of there._

_Go back to Tommy._

But he couldn’t.

The footsteps stopped. 

His lungs tightened, and he slipped in a terrified inhale. He could sense that there was something there behind him, to his right, staring at him with beady, black demon eyes, preparing to dig its claws into his flesh and feed him to its monstrous babies.

The cocking of a gun filled his ears.

_So not a demon. Definitely not a demon. Definitely someone with a gun who is going to shoot you._

Tubbo bit his lip. He wouldn’t cry, not now, not in the leering face of his death.

“Who are you.”

The man’s voice was deep, accented and rich. And it wasn’t a question, it was a demand, a fierce bark of an order. Tell me now or the muzzle of this gun goes in your mouth.

And Tubbo got the memo.

He clutched his bee before him like a shield, and slowly, as carefully as he could, turned to face the demon-man.

But he wasn't a demon. In fact, he was just a man. Quite tall, but other than that, normal-looking on the outside. His eyes were hidden behind locks of springy brown hair; a beanie perched solemnly on the back of his head. His trenchcoat hung nearly to his feet, and there was a guitar slung over his back, held in place by a leather strap. The sunlight streaming in through the windows tossed a yellow light at his face, making his skin look pallid, washed-out. He reminded Tubbo of what he imagined a ghost to look like. 

Aside from the shotgun that was currently aimed at Tubbo’s face, though, he seemed non-threatening. 

“I won’t ask you again, Bee Boy.” The man stepped very suddenly closer, thus reigniting Tubbo’s cold terror. He stumbled backward, his voice suddenly bubbling up within his throat. He had all the answers in the world, yes, he did, if only to get the gun away from him.

“I-I’m...my name is Tubbo,” he said, the words tumbling out of him like vomit. “It’s Tubbo,” he repeated, and held his bee up before his face. “Please don’t hurt me, I don’t have a weapon, I didn’t think there was anyone else alive, I’m just trying to get medical supplies for my friend, he’s hurt really badly and he’s out in the woods alone, and I--”

“Hold on, hold on, stop.”

Tubbo clamped his mouth shut. He’d turned his face downward toward the floor, bracing himself for the inevitable gunshot, the inevitable burst of pain and the descending of death’s curtain upon his vision. But it hadn’t come, and so now, he glanced slowly upward, back up at the man, back up at the thing he’d been so sure would’ve ended him. 

He’d lowered his shotgun. 

Tubbo felt his muscles immediately relax, although he kept his face planted right where they were. He wasn’t out of the woods yet.

The man’s face was twisted into a puzzled expression. He was looking at Tubbo as if examining some sort of alien species, the pure fascination and shock evident in his eyes even from where Tubbo cowered.

“You’re….your name is Tubbo,” he said, slowly, as if careful not to trip over his words. Beneath his trench coat, Tubbo could see that his sweater was dingy, ripped in some places and dangling off of his torso like a rag. The guitar on his back quivered with his labored breath.

Tubbo nodded in response to him. His nervousness had sizzled down to something more of a mere concern in the pit of his stomach. He was no longer certain that he was going to die--but the shotgun was still clutched firmly in the man’s hand. 

“This is….this is going to be a very strange question,” the man said, treading slowly, and Tubbo’s heart lurched, “but...do you recognize me?”

Tubbo blinked. It certainly was a strange question--but perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps this man was a long lost friend, part of his search party come to reconcile and bring him back to the family to which he belonged. And so Tubbo took a long look at the man--studying him, scrutinizing, searching for any remainder of that initial hostility, trying to get the sight of him to spark some deep memory within him--and did his best to remember. 

But he still came up with nothing.

He shook his head, disappointment racking him. “I’m afraid not,” he said, and glanced down at his shoes. 

“Oh.” To Tubbo’s surprise, the man’s tone dipped in volume, as if he, too, were just as disappointed. Tubbo glanced back up; he was fidgeting, now, as if nervous. “I was just...I was just wondering. Because….”

He trailed off, but something had sparked within Tubbo’s mind. The dots had connected themselves in an almost inane, instinctual sort of way. Because of course Tubbo and Tommy weren’t the only ones left. 

“You can’t remember anything about yourself.” Tubbo said it with some uncertainty, but it solidified within him as he watched the man’s face melt into something that resembled relief. He nodded. 

“Me neither,” Tubbo continued, and shook his head. “I can only remember my name and my age. And….my friend Tommy. I know that Tommy’s my friend.”

The man’s expression flickered from its former hostility into something more like sympathy. He frowned. “I don’t know anything...about myself. Just my name and age, like you said.”

And it was gloriously horrible, the relief that Tubbo felt in that moment. It bloomed over him like a fragrant perfume, filling him up with a warmth that whispered you’re not alone. You and Tommy are not alone. 

Tubbo turned a rejuvenated, fresh gaze back toward the man. “What’s your name, then?” he said. 

The man grinned, but without much mirth. “Wilbur.”

“Nice to meet you, Wilbur.” Tubbo offered forth his hand. Wilbur shook it with a vigor that surprised Tubbo. 

“Nice to meet you too, Bee boy.”

\-----

“So you were in the woods.”

Tubbo kicked at a pebble. He and Wilbur were walking slowly along the highway leading away from the town of Town No-Name--as both of them had endearingly begun to refer to it--and back toward the hill which presided over the dwelling. Both of them were laden with medical supplies from the pharmacy; various bandages, medicines, and pills, all sloshing around in Tubbo’s backpack and in a canvas bag they’d found laying on the ground outside of the town’s local supermarket that was now slung lazily over one of Wilbur’s shoulders. 

Tommy’s compass lay discreetly in Tubbo’s pocket, banging against his thigh whenever he took a step. He hadn’t mentioned it to Wilbur yet; not quite out of secrecy, but simply out of the need for prioritizing other things. 

He wondered what Wilbur would make of it, when he did decide to bring its odd, quivering arrow out into the light.

He wondered what Wilbur would make of a lot of things.

For Wilbur was a large, stooping creature, peering at everything through carefully shaded eyes. According to him, he’d awoken not within the woods, but in the middle of the street in the downtown area of Town No-Name, near the very spot where Tubbo had found his helplessness driving him to his knees. He’d been awake an entire day longer than Tommy and Tubbo, that was it. There was hardly any heads-up, hardly anything more Wilbur knew that Tubbo didn’t already.

Except, perhaps, maybe for the confirmation that there were, in fact, no people left in Town No-Name.

“Those first several hours I spent like a madman,” Wilbur had said, dumping dozens of different pill bottles into his bag. “I searched everywhere for another living soul. It….didn’t really occur to me until later that I might be….” 

He hadn’t been able to finish.

“We were in the woods,” Tubbo confirmed. They were fast approaching the hill he’d descended to reach the road. Beyond it--looming like a nimbus cloud on the horizon--was the gathering of greens and browns and leaves and wood from which Tubbo had emerged. From which he and Tommy had been placed.

The pair walked in silence for a couple moments longer, before curiosity poked at Tubbo, and he said, “What’s with the guitar?”

“Hm? Oh.” Wilbur jerked, as if being pulled from a highly immersive thought. He tossed his head back toward where the guitar--acoustic and beautifully crafted in all its wooden glory--was strapped to his back still, even despite the canvas bag. “This...I found it inside of some music shop. One of the really nice ones, this is.” He grinned. “And I got it for free.”

“Can you play?”

Wilbur shrugged. “Apparently, I can. I just….you know, I picked it up, and it was like my fingers knew exactly what to do.” He sighed, went silent for a moment, then said, “I wonder if I was a musician before all of this. Like a real proper one. I think that would be cool.”

Tubbo considered this. He tried to imagine this scruffy, tall stranger up on stage bent over an acoustic guitar, with thousands of strangers swooning over his music and swaying to the plucking of the strings. 

Tubbo wondered what he’d been before all of this.

The bee plushie was poking lightheartedly out of the top of his backpack; he’d placed it atop the medical supplies, letting its beady eyes gaze out upon the world. He wondered if this fascination with those black-and-yellow stripes was innate. He wondered if his parents were beekeepers, or if they’d been some sort of farmers. He was sure he’d be fond of animals, if he were given the chance to be. 

Perhaps he’d been a musician. 

Perhaps he’d been a connoisseur of many things, and now all of that knowledge was lost to the void that now occupied his fragile mind.

It was horrible, the way the road seemed to stretch before him. It seemed reminiscent of his initial despair. 

\-----

They reached the clearing when the sun was high in the sky, beating down upon them with relentless fists, despite the fact that it was autumn, and the breeze was biting and cool. 

Tubbo had led the way once they’d reached the woods, pulling out the compass and making sure they were headed in the exact opposite direction of the arrow’s suggestion. For a brief, terrifying while, he’d been certain he’d gotten him and Wilbur lost; but then the clearing had reared up before him like a monster from beneath the surface of a lake, presenting him with the deflated neon of the tent, and Tommy’s unconscious form, slouched lazily against the tree.

“You guys had a tent?” Wilbur came up beside Tubbo, crossed his arms skeptically. “Fuckin’ lucky.”

Tubbo merely shrugged. He turned quickly to Tommy, not wanting to waste any time. “Come here,” he said to Wilbur, “this is Tommy.”

And it certainly was, but it was hard to tell. His hair had fallen over his fluttering eyes, glinting gold in the sun. His leg was stretched before him like some alien limb, something that wasn’t supposed to be attached to him but had been stitched to him regardless. Tubbo heard Wilbur exhale at the sight of the color of Tommy’s shin. 

“What happened?” he said, looking to Tubbo with wide eyes.

“A branch fell on us overnight,” he said, and his own matter-of-fact tone surprised him. “He woke up with it crushing him.”

“Jesus. No wonder you needed all this shit.”

Tubbo, wordlessly, reached forward and shook Tommy’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said, softly, when his friend didn’t budge. “Hey, Tommy. You gotta wake up, man. I’ve got help.”

Wilbur flinched. “Well, I don’t know about ‘help’--”

Tommy groaned, and Tubbo exhaled, relief flooding him. He shook Tommy’s shoulder again, this time more forcefully. “Hey, wake up. You can’t do this, not now.”

Tommy’s lips parted momentarily, then clamped shut again. He let out another moan.

Wilbur had dropped to one knee, and was examining Tommy’s shin with the expertise of...well, of a man who didn’t remember much of anything about anything. He reached up, adjusted his beanie; somewhere in the woods, a branch snapped. The birds were back, chirping gleefully away.

“Tommy.” Tubbo ran an exasperated hand through his hair. There was a fear nipping at his heels, now, and it whispered to him ferociously. It told him that if Tubbo let Tommy sleep, he would never wake up. And if he never woke up--

“Slap him.” 

Tubbo turned abruptly to Wilbur. “What?”

Wilbur shrugged. “Slap him. That might wake him up.”

Tubbo turned hesitantly back to Tommy, and raised his hand uncertainly. “Are you sure?”

“No. But it’s worth a shot, isn’t it?”

Tubbo sighed. 

He brought his hand down upon Tommy’s cheek with as much force as he dared to muster. The sound of skin hitting skin filled the clearing; Tubbo flinched.

Tommy immediately jerked upward, eyes flying open and darting around wildly. “What the fuck. What the--” His gaze landed on Tubbo, whose face flushed red with guilt. “Why’d you fuckin’ slap me?”

“You weren’t waking up!” Tubbo threw up his hands in defense. “We need to keep you awake so you don’t--”

“I wasn’t dying,” he spat, then recoiled, seeming to reconsider. “I don’t...I don’t think I was dying.”

“You probably weren’t,” said Wilbur, who was still crouched over by Tommy’s leg. He’d removed his beanie and was beginning to unpack his canvas sack. 

Tommy’s gaze flickered. To Tubbo, he said, “Who’s this dickhead?”

Wilbur lifted a hand in greeting. “Nice to meet you, too.”

His tone reeked of sarcasm.

Tubbo sighed. “That’s Wilbur. I found him in town.”

“You found him?”

“He found me.” Wilbur flashed a rather charming smile. Tubbo was beginning to think he would’ve been quite the personable guy, if he’d not been tossed into such an unusual position. 

“He helped me carry supplies back here.” Tubbo gestured offhandedly to his backpack on the ground, and to Wilbur’s canvas sack. “He held a shotgun to my face.”

This, he meant to be humorous, but it sent Tommy into an immediate frenzy. 

“You _what_?” He jerked away from Wilbur, moving his injured leg to the right jaggedly, before immediately recoiling and hissing with pain.

“Relax! Relax.” Tubbo felt giddiness overcome him, somehow, and he let out a laugh, for what could be funnier at a time like this? Danger within a world with no memory was prevalent everywhere. “It’s okay, he’s not dangerous.”

“I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Wilbur said to Tommy, who was stille eyeing him with slitted eyes, narrow with suspicion. “That is, of course, unless you move while we try to fix your leg up. Then that’ll probably hurt.”

At this, Tommy finally settled back against the tree. “Okay,” he said to Tubbo. “If you’re sure.”

Tubbo nodded at him, then stooped and grabbed his bee from his backpack. He held it out to Tommy, and tried to give him his warmest smile. “Hold this,” he said, “it might make you feel a little better.”

Tommy looked like he wanted to scoff at the childish offering, but he took it anyway, and held it to his chest as Tubbo and Wilbur went about the tricky business of figuring out how to fix an injury they already knew nothing about.

For the first time since that morning, Tubbo felt the warm hand of hope cradling his heart. 

Perhaps they were going to be okay, after all.


	3. A Compass and The Voice In His Head

Evening fell upon the clearing almost unannounced, bringing about its fiery reds and purples as quietly as if it were trying to sneak in past curfew without getting caught.

Wilbur sat with his guitar in his lap against a tree lining the clearing; towards the middle, a small campfire crackled softly. This was where Tubbo was sprawled, eyelids flickering with a heavy, burdened sleep. Over to the right, Tommy was curled up among the remains of their tent, using the collapsed canvas as a sort of blanket. They’d elevated his leg underneath a bunched-up sleeping bag. 

Wilbur watched the light flicker and fade over the clearing, as he let his fingers dance along the strings of his guitar, as loudly as he dared. It had been the only thing that had followed him from whatever previous life he lived into this one, this instinctual ability to play the way he did; his fingers knew exactly where to go, exactly how to craft a soft acoustic sound. 

He wished he knew where it had come from.

But whenever he considered the absurdity of his situation, a dull rage beat against the insides of his chest with furious fists. It angered him, how little he knew; how little he remembered. He suspected he didn’t much like the unknown, and this world was filled with it.

His paranoia was deep-rooted; he didn’t want to sleep, for fear that something would emerge from the woods and grasp at the three of them with claws or guns or both, for all he knew. His own shotgun lay close beside him, at the ready, safety off. He’d known these boys for an entire six hours, and yet he felt the inane urge to protect them.

Perhaps he was a good person.

Perhaps he was afraid of being alone again.

He glanced over toward the boys, once again; Tommy was shivering against his makeshift blanket, his arms wrapped tightly around Tubbo’s stuffed bee. Tubbo had offered it to him wholeheartedly, despite his strange attachment to the thing. 

A breeze picked up. Wilbur stopped his plucking at the guitar and stood. Quietly, he made his way over to Tommy and shrugged off his trench coat--which was heavy and padded, something he’d awoken with and something he hadn’t removed since. As gently as he could, he laid it across Tommy’s quivering form, tucking it in so that it covered almost all of the boy’s exposed skin. The shirt Tommy was wearing was not built to withstand the cold weather that was sure to come. They’d have to find him a real coat sometime soon.

As soon as Wilbur’s coat was draped over him, however, Tommy groaned, let go of the bee and grasped at the cloth of it, pulling it around him gratefully. A small smile tugged at Wilbur’s lips. 

“You cold?” he found himself asking, softly, so as not to wake Tubbo.

Tommy groaned again, didn’t open his eyes. “Thanks for the jacket,” he mumbled.

“You’re welcome,” Wilbur said, but Tommy’s breathing had already slowed once again, his lips parting as he drifted off into sleep.

Something nudged Wilbur’s heart, something miniscule but blooming with an unusual pang of….what, exactly? He wasn’t able to place it. But looking at Tommy, he felt something fierce overcome him. Something that drove him away from his reality--from the loping, wild-eyed creature drifting alone in a desolate world--and into a warmer thought. A thought that whispered to him and told him, you have something to protect.

_Something to live for._

It was nice. 

Sighing, Wilbur stood, feeling drowsiness tug at him for the first time since that morning. He’d spent the night before in the floor of a sporting goods store, where he’d found his shotgun, and his neck still ached with the hardness of the tile. 

Grabbing his guitar, he settled down by the fire opposite Tubbo, whose head was resting on the other sleeping bag, using it as a pillow. The thin blanket that Wilbur had found and used himself in that store was draped over his legs, making him look as if he was wearing some sort of ragged, neon skirt. Wilbur grimaced as he settled back, laying his guitar and shotgun beside him like he was an overly compulsive child with a strict bedtime routine, setting up stuffed animals so that they could keep watch while he slept.  
This night wouldn’t be very comfortable, that was for sure.

He laid back against the unforgiving earth, and tilted his head toward the sky.

Through the canopy of leaves, he could see billions of stars, spattering themselves before him like he’d taken a paintbrush and flung dots of paint up toward a dark canvas. He inhaled sharply, awe overcoming him, inflating him, causing him to float atop his fear.  
He wasn’t alone anymore.

Perhaps he’d never been alone at all.

_You’re more than that guitar, you know._

He didn’t know where the inner voice had come from, only that it was there now, pressed against his cortex like a companion, of sorts. It had whispered to him the previous night, as he’d tried to fall asleep amid the deafening silence of the world around him, the darkness of the store, the cruelness of the tile floor.

_You’re more than that guitar, and you’re more than you ever thought you’d be._

Usually, it spouted nonsense. Perhaps it would’ve made sense in his previous life.

Assuming he had a previous life.

Wilbur felt his eyelids begin to droop; the voice had dropped away for the night, retreating into its sedentary alcove somewhere deep in his head.

_Fuck you,_ he told it.

It didn’t respond.

\---

Pain seized him by the collar and dragged him up and out of sleep with a horrible grip.

He jerked to consciousness, and was immediately assaulted by a jagged searing in the deep of his gut. It flung red over his vision, sending sparks dancing horribly in the synapses of his brain. He sat up and clutched at himself, hunching over, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to wish it away, overwhelmed by the sheer force of it.

A scream tore away from his throat before he was even aware he was making any noise. Everything was red and black and sizzling with the blooming in his gut, as if someone had driven a foot into his side, had kicked something within him loose. As if his intestines were unraveling, as if he was being strung along by some invisible puppet line, tugging at his sanity, tugging at everything within him.

Faintly, he heard someone--one of the boys--call his name. He responded with another cry. He felt his face scrunch up. 

He felt a hand alight upon his shoulder, but he jerked away from it, not sure he was able to handle any more physical touch, not while he was like this. He doubled over, curling up into a ball, and did his best to stick it out. He could feel a bubble of concern rise up around him, and he could feel somebody’s eyes upon him.

_What’s happening to me?_

“What’s happening to him?”

“I don’t know--”

“Tubbo, you’ve got to do something!”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, something!”

Wilbur shook his head, the pain hooking him and hugging him to its horribly cold underbelly. He let out a gasp. He considered praying. And then--

It was gone as suddenly as it had come.

He lay there for a moment, waited as the world around him snapped back into place. The trees began their whispering again, gossiping about God knew what. Slowly, he let himself unravel, let his eyes flutter open and come face to face with the dirt floor of the forest, soil which he’d thrashed against violently. He exhaled shakily, and glanced up toward where Tubbo was crouched beside him. Tommy was standing a ways behind Tubbo, putting his weight upon a large stick, as if it were a cane, staring down at him, blue eyes bubbling with concern.

Some emotion tugged at Wilbur, but he couldn’t place it beneath the wave of nausea that had overcome him suddenly. He groaned, turned over onto his back, and looked up at the bright sky.

It was morning.

Clouds raced along overhead, chasing their tails.

“Are you okay?” he heard Tubbo ask him.

Wilbur let himself take a few deep breaths, let himself focus on the clouds. _Looks like rain,_ he let himself think.

Then, he said, “I’m fine.”

“What happened?” This was Tommy.

Wilbur bit his lip, considering. 

What _had_ happened?

Fear raced through him. He recoiled, suddenly and said breathlessly, “I don’t think we need to worry about it.”

Tubbo fixed him with a furrowed brow. “You’re….sure?”

Wilbur felt himself nod. It was a strange thing, how separate he seemed to become from himself all of the sudden. How well he was able to pretend that he wasn’t still reeling from the remnants of the chasm that had just opened within him. How effectively he was able to clear his mind from the worry that there was something severely wrong with him, some unforeseen, untreatable illness that would snatch him from the dirt and drag him into an even larger, colder unknown. 

So, he nodded.

And he said, “I’m okay, now. Really, swear to God, Tubbo.”

Behind Tubbo, Tommy leaned crookedly upon his makeshift cane, his injured leg held upward from the ground. His hair was wild and was in desperate need of a brush--though Wilbur was sure his probably didn’t look much better.

He eyed Wilbur through the locks hanging in his eyes, and said, “You were floppin’ around like a fish, man.”

Wilbur shrugged. “I was….I must’ve been having a nightmare. About….falling or something. You know. Or….maybe like I was being murdered. Or maybe….I don’t know, I really don’t remember, but it may have been a murder.” Wilbur was vaguely aware he was rambling, and promptly snapped his mouth shut. 

“Oh, great.” Tommy rolled his eyes over to Tubbo, who was still kneeling in the dirt. “You’ve picked up the local loco.”

Wilbur snapped his gaze back up to Tommy, something in him tightening. “Who the fuck are you calling loco?”

“You, dickhead.” Tommy tapped Wilbur’s shin with his walking stick; not hard enough for it to hurt, but most definitely hard enough to bring about a flare of annoyance from within Wilbur’s chest.

“Well, I wasn’t the victim of the virtuous wrath of a fucking _tree branch_ ,” said Wilbur. He resisted the primal urge to give Tommy’s stick a little kick--he’s injured, you can’t be an asshole.

“I’m not a cripple,” Tommy said. He tapped Wilbur’s shin again, and Wilbur gritted his teeth. 

_Fuck being an asshole._ Wilbur shot out a foot and let his boot tap Tommy’s pretend cane. It didn’t fly out of his grip, but it did throw Tommy off balance, causing him to wobble dangerously. He cried out, and turned blazing eyes toward Wilbur. 

“Hey, what gives!”

“Stop poking me!”

“Stop being a weirdo!”

Wilbur stopped for a moment, considering him; his own trench coat was still dangling off of the boy’s thin shoulders, scraping at his heels. 

“So your leg isn’t broken,” Wilbur said, eyeing the way Tommy’s khakis were scrunched down over the shin, covering the ugly bruise that had bloomed there.

“Well, _obviously,_ dickhead.”

“Good. That’s…..good.” Wilbur felt a bit of relief trickle into his aching gut. At least he didn’t have that to deal with.

“Guys.” Tubbo’s tone was sudden, urgent, laced with pleading; both boys turned their gazes sharply to him. He was staring downward, at something clutched in his palms. It was golden, and it glinted in the rapidly fading sunlight. 

“Tubbo?” Tommy’s tone had completely switched. He was staring down at the thing in Tubbo’s grip, his brow drawn. “What’s the matter?”

Wilbur leaned forward, concern for Tubbo prickling at him. “Is that a compass?” 

“Yeah, but it’s….” He turned his gaze upward toward Tommy, who suddenly appeared to resemble a tired soul, old and frayed at the edges. It was startling to Wilbur, how fast his demeanor had changed, at the sight of that little compass. 

“The direction changed,” said Tubbo, and he held it up to show Tommy. Leaning in, Tommy furrowed his brow. “The arrow was pointing west, but now it’s pointing….”

“South.” Tommy straightened, stared down at his feet. Wilbur watched him, something tugging strangely at him.

He looked to Tubbo again. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘the direction changed?’”

“I mean it--” Tubbo stopped, met Wilbur’s curious gaze. Lodged within Tubbo’s eyes, Wilbur saw a peculiar sort of fear, something similar to what he’d seen back at the pharmacy, when he’d held that shotgun to his sweat-beaded forehead. 

Softly, Wilbur said, “It’s okay, Tubbo. Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.”

“Hey, man,” said Tommy, and he reached over and placed a hand upon his friend’s shoulder, holding it tight, “take a break. You’ve been going and goin’ all morning. All that pacing isn’t good for you, you know. Causes….arthritis, or some shit.” He grimaced, but plunged ahead. “You don’t have to worry about this just yet, yeah? Don’t want you collapsing” and shit.”

“Here.” Without really thinking about it, Wilbur held out his hand, palm up. Reluctantly--but with a relieved loosening of his expression--Tubbo dropped the golden compass into Wilbur’s palm. Wilbur brought it close to him, and stared at it. 

The arrow was, indeed, quivering in a very wrong direction. Instead of pointing north, as compasses were supposed to, it was beckoning him south, just over his shoulder. Wilbur twisted his lips into a frown; but it was strange, the way this new development of the unknown seemed to pluck at him. It didn’t bring about that familiar anger that seemed to marinate within him whenever he thought about being stuck as a boy with no memory. All it did was cause a dull wonderment to spring up within the bottom of his gut, quickly replacing the resonant pain and causing him to turn, to look in the direction of the south with wide, expectant eyes. 

He guessed that if you placed even more unique developments atop an already-unique situation, the less unique it all becomes together. 

“It was pointing west,” said Tubbo, disregarding Tommy’s hand on his shoulder. He was staring at the ground, now, trouble hanging over his head like a cloud. “It was pointing toward that town.” Blinking, he looked at Wilbur.

“It was pointing toward you.”

Something fell within Wilbur. He looked at Tommy, who--miraculously--was still bundled up in Wilbur’s trench coat, shielding himself from the fierce breeze of the morning. Tubbo’s bee lay near his toe, smiling wretchedly up at the darkening sky, soil already nested between its beady eyes. Wilbur’s guitar, discarded in his effort to get to sleep, with its tightened strings and still-new polish to its wood, trees reflected in its sheen. These were things which whispered to him fiercely, which reminded him that his loneliness was something tangible. But with tangibility came the ability to fling it outward, to be rid himself of it. 

And while he still felt the urge to send Tommy’s stick flying away from him into the woods--and probably how funny it would be to watch him land flat on his ass as it happened--he felt the primal urge to protect the boy and his worrisome friend. 

“It was pointing at me, you said?” Wilbur lifted the compass, moved his body to see if the arrow would follow him. However, it kept a steady gaze trained toward the south. 

“Maybe it’s pointing at someone else, now.” Tommy’s eyes were suddenly aflame. He looked to Wilbur, excitement blossoming, splitting his lips into a grin. “Maybe there are more of us.”

Wilbur returned the smile wearily, and turned the compass over in his hands. Rubbed his finger over the TOMMY carved carefully into the base of the gold.

“It’s yours, Tommy?” He said this slowly, carefully. Thoughts were already racing through his mind like the storm gathering above, filling him with a new kind of hope--but also a hurricane of doubt. 

_You’re just beginning to see things in their color, Wilbur, but you must ignore the gray which seeps into the edges of them._

_Fuck off. Get out of my head._

“Supposedly, it’s mine.” Tommy shrugged. “I don’t remember it being mine, of course. It’s just got my name on the back.”

“It’s got his name on the back,” Tubbo repeated, and he was suddenly bubbling with eagerness, that dismal worry erased and replaced as easily as if it were a penciled-in mistake upon a piece of paper. 

“I say we follow it.” Tommy straightened with considerable effort. Wilbur felt the sudden urge to reach out, to steady him. Sit down, for God’s sake, you’re injured.  
Tubbo glanced up at him, startled, but a wild grin--unruly, uncharacteristic and a sudden shift from that hopeless expression he’d been toting about just moments before--split his lips. “You think we should?”

“Well, yeah.” Tommy gestured with the hand that wasn’t clasping his walking stick, out to the woods beyond them. “If there’s even a chance we could find other people, we should fuckin’ take it.”

Concern riffled its way through Wilbur’s chest. He glanced down at the compass--at the engravement on the back, on the quivering, disturbed needle--then back up at Tommy. “You’re injured,” he said, not quite firmly, but not quite nicely.

Tommy glanced down at his leg--at the foot he kept carefully poised a few inches from the ground, the pant leg wrapped carefully around the blooming bruise that lay underneath. “I’ll be okay,” he said to Wilbur, and jiggled his stick. “I’ve got me cane.”

“Yeah.” Tubbo jumped to his feet, a bubble of reborn energy. “Yeah, and I can help him if he falls. He can lean on me, and we can stop if he feels like he can’t walk anymore.”

“We’ll take breaks,” Tommy said, nodding. 

Wilbur was quite frankly taken aback by the boys’ sudden eagerness. They were balls of light in his vision, bouncing around in the reflection of the fading sun. He watched curiously as Tommy hobbled over toward the collapsed tent, where their few belongings were scattered. Tubbo reached for his bee, plucked it up and held it to his chest. 

He looked to Wilbur. “You’re just going to sit there?”

Wilbur could merely blink. “You’re so….I mean, have you even considered the fact that there might be predators out there? Dangerous shit. I mean, you made it to me okay, but you might’ve been lucky. You don’t have a gun, or any means of protection, and one of us is crippled--”

“I’m not crippled!” called Tommy--who was currently struggling to lower himself to the ground to gather the rest of the food they’d received. 

“And you’ve got a gun,” said Tubbo, and gestured to the shotgun laying a discreet few feet away from where Wilbur was sitting. He smiled innocently. “You can protect us.”

Wilbur resisted the urge to flinch. He didn’t want to let his fear leak out between his words, in the way his lips twisted whenever presented with the prospect of venturing out again into something unknown. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was growing attached to these boys. He probably wouldn’t ever forgive himself if he were to allow something to happen to them.

But that quivering arrow.

Wilbur had to admit, it did spark some hope within his churning gut.

And so he stood. Tubbo beamed at him.

“We’ll be okay,” he said, reaching up to nudge Wilbur’s arm. 

Wilbur was sure, somewhere deep down, that they would turn out okay. But his uncertainty lay in the beyond; whatever this endeavor would bring upon them, surely there would be more to face. For this world was unforgiving, Wilbur was quickly finding, and it was hastily gnawing on his dignity, his courage, and (quite subtly, but still very dominantly there, present in the way he seemed to feel as though the trees were watching them, and the way the back of his mind told him that the pain in his gut was the result of some kind of poisoning done by an unknown enemy) his sanity. 

But he helped clean up their little adolescent camp.

\---

Their journey proved to walk the line between treacherous and a series of mildly annoying inconveniences. 

Their belongings weren’t many, and so it was easy to carry things among themselves; Tubbo toted his backpack, which they’d managed to stuff the majority of what they already had into; which consisted of the medical supplies and the sleeping bags. In Wilbur’s canvas sack--which rested lightly on Tommy’s shoulder--was the food that the boys had found already nestled within their tent, among a few other things. Wilbur didn’t allow Tommy to carry more than the bare minimum, despite the boy’s crude and quite ludicrous protests.

“I’m not that bad off!” he’d insisted, when Wilbur had initially removed the sack from his eager, jittering shoulder. “I can help!”

“I don’t want to push you,” Wilbur had countered, and had begun to throw the bag over his own shoulder when Tommy’s hand shot out, grasped his wrist.

“Don’t treat me like that.” His voice was low, pleading, and his eyes were wide. 

Wilbur blinked, taken aback. “Like what?”

“Like I’m a child.”

And so the trio made their way through the woods, slowly but surely making headway. Wilbur led the way, compass clutched tightly in his right hand. His guitar was slung haphazardly across his back, and his shotgun hung at the ready on his shoulder. He could feel it bumping lazily against his hip, in time with the rhythm of his footsteps, seeming to whisper its presence to him every other moment. He was acutely aware of his position as a sort of protector, of the fact that he was solely responsible for warding off potential danger--what with Tommy’s injury and Tubbo’s inability to handle a weapon. He felt as if the trees swayed toward them, inching their menacing gazes along their path, following them, waiting for a moment to expose itself as vulnerable. Above, the skies had grown dark with rain, clouds hanging pregnant overhead, seeming to cackle with the anticipation. Wilbur wished desperately that it was sunny; with rain came a stronger chill, and with a stronger chill came a greater chance of pneumonia or something of the sort. 

He wondered if he’d been this cautious and well-rounded Before. He wondered if Before Wilbur had dealt with this seeping darkness at the edges of his mind, if he had to ward of the voice that spouted nonsense within his mind. A voice that did not feel as if it were a part of him, but of some other entity entirely. Something watching over him, perhaps, something akin to a ghost, or a guardian angel.

_A winged man._  
He wondered if Before Wilbur had believed in angels.

They walked for quite some time. The rain came, and it came with a vengeance of sorts. It preyed on them relentlessly, soaking them to the bone and causing hair to hang over eyes and clothes to drip annoyingly. They kept having to stop due to Tommy’s leg--much to Tommy’s malcontentment most of all. He didn’t like to admit that he was a burden to the group, but the fact of it was painted all over his dangling dead weight of a leg. He wouldn’t be able to walk for much longer, and they were miles away from their original camp, miles away from anywhere, it seemed. 

Tubbo did his best to keep their spirits up, telling lighthearted jokes to pass the time. “What did the farmer call his cow with no legs?” 

“What?” said Wilbur, watching the needle of the compass steadily.

“Ground beef!” And he would burst into a fit of giggles.

Wilbur didn’t experience any more pain for as long as they walked. He was beginning to hope it had been a one-time thing; but that nagging worry lay pungent, like a bad smell, in the back of his mind. Something is wrong with you.

They walked for hours. The sun rose and then began to fall. They stopped for Tommy’s leg, picked back up again. Stopped for water, picked back up again. Stopped for lunch. Tommy’s leg. Water. Repeat.

Wilbur could feel fatigue beginning to tug at him relentlessly. For the millionth time, he adjusted the shotgun on his shoulder; he and Tommy had made a compromise, switching the canvas bag back and forth every hour or so. He glanced back; Tommy’s face was twisted with borderline agony. Tubbo’s brow was beaded with sweat, and his eyelids were droopy. Wilbur could feel his own legs beginning to cramp, his own body beginning to give up on him. The rain had let up some time ago, but they were all still damp, and he hadn’t stopped shivering since.

He stopped walking. “Let’s rest here for a long while.”

He saw Tommy sigh, something relieved; but Tubbo’s brow twisted, and he frowned. 

“Wilbur.” He was looking beyond Wilbur’s shoulder, through the trees ahead. “There’s….do you see that?”

He lifted his finger and pointed; Wilbur turned, and squinted--his vision had become steadily more and more unfocused, and he had to really focus in order to look. After a moment, what Tubbo was referring to snapped into place:

Through the trees, glittering black like a beetle, was a long strip of freeway, winding through the countryside like a snake in a garden. Cars were abandoned upon it, stopped as if they were nothing but toys left out by some massive toddler. But nevertheless, it was something other than woods. 

Wilbur felt a smile creep upon his lips. He turned back to Tubbo. “A highway,” he breathed, as if it wasn’t obvious.

He looked to Tommy, expecting to see an expression of relief, rejoice, something. But the other boy was staring solemnly at the compass in Wilbur’s hand. 

“Tommy?” Wilbur furrowed his brow.

“The compass.” Tommy gestured tiredly toward it. “Look.”

Wilbur looked; the arrow was spinning wildly, as if the magnetic forces of the globe had snapped, falling away entirely, leaving them stranded in some universe without rhyme or reason.

He felt his heart sink strangely.

And just as he reached for his shotgun, he heard a familiar click sound loudly in the silence of the forest.

“Hands where I can see them. Don’t move a fucking muscle.”


	4. A Sword and The Highway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight warning for this chapter: it gets a little gory, but not anything too intense or descriptive. However, if you are made uncomfortable by guns, blood, or any sort of injury, I would proceed with caution! This doesn't apply for the entirety of the chapter, but I thought I'd put a warning here just in case!

Ranboo jolted suddenly to consciousness, roused by the clanging of metal.

He opened his eyes--or rather, his one eye, as the other was still plastered over with a bandage, his sight there hindered by whatever injury he’d endured--and tried to get the bearings of his surroundings as quickly as possible. 

He was in some sort of tent; the canvas roof sloped deftly up and away above him; beyond it, the day was cloudy, gray and backlit like some sort of silhouette. His back was stiff; he’d been asleep atop some sort of thin cot thrown haphazardly onto the ground, but which did virtually nothing to shield against the hardness of the earth below the tent. Ranboo slowly reached up a hand and rubbed his neck, which was beginning to ache with the way he’d slept on it.

The clanging came from beyond the tent; next to him, there was a crumpled blanket, and a backpack, tightly zipped. 

He let his hand fly upward to nest within his hair, scratching at an itch just above his compromised eye. Dull confusion tugged at him; he could feel a peculiar darkness encompassing the edges of his mind, breaching any vital information from reaching his comprehension. It was strange, how far the tent suddenly seemed to stretch before him, away from him, running from his desperate grasp on reality.

And then the events of the past day or so caught up with him, yanking him backwards into a more reasonable--but equally as disorienting--world: he’d awoken in the middle of what appeared to be an abandoned highway, cars frozen in place around him, left to rot by their owners mid-journey, it seemed. He’d had no memory of a past life, no memory of anything but his name and age ( _Ranboo, 17, nothing else, oh God, there’s got to be more there’s got to be more--_ ). 

He’d been wearing a dingy Hawaiian shirt over an even dingier tee, overtop still dingier jeans. He’d been the walking epitome of a hobo, he’d thought, disgusted, when he’d first peered down at himself.

And then he’d discovered that he couldn’t peer. Not exactly.

Because of course there was this business of his eye, its bandage, and whatever peculiar thing had happened to it. He still hadn’t mustered the courage to look.

The highway around him was expansive, seeming to lead onward toward nowhere, surrounded entirely by a vast wilderness that also, unfortunately, didn’t appear to have an end. His reality had been sent skittering off-kilter into a world of half-sight, of shadows placed at the wrong edges of his vision. Of more things he wasn’t able to see than things he was able to. 

There was never a more disorienting feeling.

He’d felt sick, nauseous, and he must’ve stumbled all along that highway for hours, screaming, feeling the words scrape his throat raw. His cries for help had been torn out of him, now, exhausted by those first couple of hours he spent cowering in cold fear. He remembered collapsing on the asphalt at some point, exhaustion overcoming him all of the sudden. 

He remembered waking up, being jolted, really, as someone had placed him upon a piece of canvas and was now graciously dragging him along the road behind them.

He’d scrambled to grasp consciousness, and when he caught it, he’d cried out, “Hey!”

The person dragging him--long, pink hair tied up into a bun, a regal coat draped over broad shoulders--didn’t stop. All Ranboo had gotten from him was a gruff, “Lay back. Just trust me.”

“How am I supposed to- who the heck _are you_? And why are you dragging me?” Ranboo’s panic had practically been tangible. 

He’d begun to scramble off of the piece of canvas, back onto the road where he could clamber to his feet and begin to run.

But then he’d spotted the sword hanging from the stranger’s belt, thumping against his leg rhythmically as he walked. It was long, incredibly so, and looked poised to kill, despite the fact that it was sheathed.

The stranger let his hand rest atop the sword’s hilt. 

Ranboo stopped his scrambling; this one movement, though perfunctory and subtle, had been enough to pierce him with a strange fear.

“Lay back,” said the stranger.

Ranboo laid back.

He’d let himself be dragged, all the way to a strange campsite further down the highway, on the side of the road near a cluster of abandoned cars. And he must’ve fallen asleep just as soon as they’d arrived, because tossing and turning within this tent--a garish orange, brighter than anything he’d ever known--was the last thing he remembered.

Now, he glanced down at himself, in the tent; he’d kicked what little blankets he’d been given off of himself sometime in the night, and they lay crumpled at the foot of the mattress. He turned his head slightly; there was a cracked compact mirror laying near the closed mouth of the backpack, seeming to stare at him provocatively.

Slowly, he reached over and plucked it up, holding it before him like it was some sort of sacred jewel, as if he were a cave explorer stumbled upon an ancient lottery of some kind. 

He let his eyes focus in on the mirror, and got a glimpse of his face for the first time. 

His stomach lurched. 

It was horrendous. The right half of his face, of course, was unscathed entirely, left mercifully untouched by whatever monster had found its way into his path.

The left half was a different story altogether.

Scars snaked dolefully up his cheek, twisting in toward the bandage that covered his eye. They were like vines, donning his skin and branding him as something of a hideous nature by any normal standard. The scars themselves were strange enough, seemingly unnatural, irregular and erratic, as if they had simply appeared on the skin there organically. 

It was strange, to see himself for the first time and to be met with such an irregular image.

“You’re awake.”

Starting, Ranboo dropped the compact into his lap. He glanced up sharply, and came face to face with the stranger, who had ducked into the tent and was now peering at him curiously. 

It occurred to Ranboo simply that his confusion was something blinding, something that had faded into the background of his being that it was simply a part of him, now. His shock at seeing his face had already dulled; the replacement shock of seeing the stranger--of remembering the unusual circumstances under which he’d come to be in this tent in the first place--had already faded as well. Life was a plastic wheel, and Ranboo had never felt more like a hamster.

“I’m awake,” he said, cautiously, overly aware of the way his lips pulled themselves over his teeth when he spoke. His mind was racing, desperately reaching to remember anything before waking up on this stretch of highway. 

_There was nothing. There’s always been nothing for you._

The stranger had pulled his hair loose, and it fell in drapes around his face, a pink waterfall. His eyes were dark as he regarded Ranboo. 

After a moment of awkward silence, he produced a thermos and offered it to Ranboo. “You should drink.”

Reluctantly, Ranboo reached forward and grabbed the thermos, suddenly acutely aware of how dry his mouth was. Unscrewing it, he sipped at it uncertainly, then decided, fuck it, and tipped it back to chug. 

The stranger watched him as he drank, a curious gaze plastered on his face. When Ranboo brought the thermos away from his lips, gasping, the stranger shifted, settling down at the mouth of the tent. “Techno.”

Ranboo’s brow furrowed. “What?”

The stranger blinked. “My name is Techno.”

It was a word that filled the silence graciously, chipping at a barrier that had been such a heavy weight upon Ranboo’s thin shoulders. He resisted the urge to smile. “Techno?”

“Techno.”

“Nice to meet you.” Ranboo offered forth his hand.

Techno didn’t shake it. “You never told me your name.”

“Oh.” It occurred to him, suddenly, that he hadn’t. All he’d done was allow himself to be dragged like a rag doll across miles of open highway. “Uh, it’s Ranboo.”

“Well.” Techno took back the thermos when Ranboo handed it to him, and screwed the cap back onto it tightly. “I would say it’s nice to meet you, too, but you were unconscious when I first met you. So that’s awkward of me to say, technically speakin’.”

He began to peel himself back out of the tent’s opening, attempting to disappear once more out of Ranboo’s limited line of vision. Before he could stop himself, Ranboo’s lips were already parting, and he called, “Wait.”

Techno froze, and he met Ranboo’s half gaze once again. “Yes?”

“I…” Ranboo found, suddenly, that his tongue had tied itself to the backs of his front teeth. His mind was equitable to a pit of darkness; nothing within it but this highway, nothing but this highway and this tent and Techno. The things he was seeing were processing slowly, floating up and away within the darkness like a column of smoke. 

These were things he wished desperately to grasp, but everything seemed to be moving beneath him. He was unable to get his bearings.

“What’s happening?” Ranboo heard his words fall out of him, and resisted the urge to grimace; he sounded weak, his voice wavering with the fear that was slowly filling him up like some sort of human balloon. 

“What’s happening to me?” he repeated, firmer this time. He tried to hold Techno’s steady, expressionless gaze, but found that it was near to impossible. 

Everything was off-kilter.

Everything was simmering with insanity.

He felt like he wanted to cry.

Techno was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. “I can’t tell you,” he said, “because I don’t even know myself.”

Panic began to rise within Ranboo’s throat. “What does that mean?”

“It means I woke up, same as you. I only know my name and age.” Ranboo could see the grimace behind Techno’s words, though his face remained as stoic as ever. He was fingering the hilt of his sword, almost nervously; he looked awkward in the mouth of the tent, as if he were a heavenly being that had crashed tragically upon earth. 

“I’ve been awake for three days, now,” he continued, letting his gaze flicker down toward the tent’s floor. His tone was steady, even. He was very good at concealing things, Ranboo thought. 

Or maybe he didn’t feel them at all.

“I found you on the highway yesterday afternoon. I thought you were dead.” At this, Techno chuckled. “What with your…” He gestured halfheartedly toward his face.

Ranboo bit his lip. 

“Anyway.” Techno coughed awkwardly--Ranboo’s cheeks were burning--but he pressed onward, either oblivious or ignorant. “I thought you were dead, and I’d gone without food for a while, now--”

“Wait, hold on.” Alarm flared suddenly within Ranboo. “You were gonna eat me?”

“Let me finish.” Techno squinted at him, as if he were an overeager kindergartener. “I was goin’ to eat you. Key word: was. Alright? But then I saw that you were breathin’, and I thought, well, shit. Can’t eat this kid now.”

Ranboo was astonished. He could only gape at this hell of a thing before him, this warrior of a man who had appeared as suddenly as an angel. He couldn’t even begin to process the fact that he had just barely missed becoming his dinner. 

“Well, anyway. I didn’t want to leave you out in the open. You know there’s not much civilization around here, and quite a lot of predators. Oh, speaking of.” Techno reached behind him, where there was a bag situated on the ground outside of the tent. He rummaged in it for a moment, then brought out a large dagger, the tip wrapped in a delicate, black leather. He held it out for Ranboo to take. “You’ll need this,” he said. “You know. To ward off the predators.”

“Predators?” Ranboo’s head was whirling. _What fresh hell had he stumbled into?_ “I don’t think I can--”

“You can,” said Techno, and that was that.

Ranboo gazed down at the knife. Large, sharp, incredibly menacing. It didn’t seem to fit in his hands, but then again, what did he know? 

“I felt bad for you, is what I’m tryin’ to say.” Techno had started talking again, stumbling his way through his already-awkward introduction. But of course, how are you supposed to explain something like this? “So I brought you with me.”

“Oh.” It was all Ranboo could muster. 

They sat there for a moment, taking each other in. Ranboo could only imagine what he must look like to someone who was outside of himself; he felt awkward, out of place. 

There were things sparking at the edges of his limited vision. He put a hand to his forehead, and let out a sigh.

“Whenever you’re ready,” said Techno, suddenly, moving to get out of the tent’s opening, “I’ve got a breakfast goin’ on the fire.”

“Breakfast?” Ranboo looked at him curiously.

Techno shrugged. “It’s a duck.”

Ranboo nodded. That figured.

And so Techno clambered out of the tent, leaving Ranboo to take a moment to himself. 

\-----

There were three things that Ranboo quickly realized about Techno, sitting by the fire and gnawing halfheartedly at an unevenly cooked piece of duck: 

One of them was that Techno seemed to be a fidgeter. His hands were always twining themselves around each other, tugging at the hem of his long jacket, the threads of whatever bag he happened to be holding. There rarely seemed to be a moment where Techno was utterly still. 

The second thing was his sword. And how glorious of a sword it was. Ranboo hadn’t mustered up the courage to ask exactly where one was to acquire such a thing; for even with it sheathed, he could tell that it was the real deal, leather-wrapped and studded with metal. It looked absolutely lethal, and Techno handled it with confidence, with the vigor of someone who had held such lethality before. 

Which brought Ranboo to the third and final thing: Techno seemed very much acquainted with dangerous situations. Perhaps Techno didn’t realize this about himself just yet; of course, what was there to remember, if he was, in fact, lodged within the same position as Ranboo? But it was apparent in the way he walked, the way his eyes widened at every unfamiliar sound. It was clear in his ever-present calmness, manifested itself in the awkwardness that sometimes arose within the spaces of his phrases. It was astounding to Ranboo, who, despite knowing everything he could possibly know about his situation, still felt as lost as if he were dreaming. He felt as if he were in some large painting with a fickle artist who constantly changed the landscape around him. Or perhaps some writer who didn’t quite know where they were going with his character.

Ranboo gnawed slowly at his breakfast; he found that he could take comfort in Techno’s sureness, the way his body moved as if it always knew exactly what it was doing. He’d tied his long, pink hair up again, into a ponytail which trailed officiously down his back. It made Ranboo reach up and scrub a hand through his own, scruffy hair, which was long enough to resemble a bird’s nest with its multitude of tangles, but wasn’t long enough to tie back in such a sophisticated way.

They talked little. What was there to say? Around them, the highway stretched horrendously, as if they were in an optical illusion. The cars within themselves were eerie; they disturbed Ranboo on some deeper level, caused his mind to whirl even faster than it already was.

What kind of a thing causes this level of abandonment?

Of course, the word “apocalypse” was the first thing to pop into his head. There was a reasonable explanation, he told himself inwardly; there had been some sort of nuclear explosion, followed by some mass evacuation. Perhaps he and Techno had been left behind, but instead of being vaporized, they’d simply been corrupted by the radiation--which had then proceeded to wipe their memories. Perhaps it had something to do with why his face was so badly upheaved, and what exactly was underneath the bandage over his eye? 

He didn’t voice his theories to Techno. He didn’t want to sound stupid.

However, he did feel the need to fill the silence. 

“Hey, Techno, do you wanna hear a joke?”

“Shhh.” 

Ranboo glanced up, startled, embarrassed, cheeks flushing hotly. “Sorry,” he said, quickly, sure that he’d offended him somehow. “I won’t speak if you don’t want me--”

“No. Stop talking.” Techno’s eyes were wide; his hands had gone stock still. He was looking pointedly at a spot over Ranboo’s shoulder, toward the woods that flanked the side of the highway, the thick expanse of trees which grew close to the road and was apt to remind one of prehistoric times, underbrush grown astray and the trees unkempt with abandonment. 

Ranboo’s stomach dropped. He clamped his lips shut, and felt a cold fear wash over him swiftly. 

Techno’s hand had flown to the hilt of his sword. His face was perfectly stoic, his body perfectly poised, eyes locked on whatever he’d seen in those woods. Ranboo watched him carefully.

He didn’t dare speak.

“Ranboo.” Techno’s voice was low, barely floundering above a whisper. His eyes remained fixated on those woods, and Ranboo felt something horrible trickle into his gut. 

“Ranboo, get down.”

His tone remained perfectly calm, but the urgency lodged behind the words was as evident as ever. Moving swiftly, jittering with nerves, Ranboo dropped from the folding chair he’d been lounging in facedown onto the concrete, landing squarely on his stomach and hands.

Just as he lowered his cheek onto the asphalt of the highway, the shooting began.

It was a burst of thunder, an explosion of noise which encased and assaulted Ranboo’s ears as violently as a hurricane. His fear dissolved into adrenaline; he threw his hands up, over, covering his head, curling his fingers into his hair. His thoughts dispersed like a school of fish, and all he knew for the next few moments was noise.

His first thought was: _this is really, really loud._

His second thought was: _Oh God. Techno._

He turned his head slightly, saw with a bit of relief that Techno had taken his own cover behind one of the camping chairs, and was clutching a small pistol in his right hand, aiming it toward the woods. But even Ranboo, disoriented, confused, young and wild and one-eyed, knew in his limited knowledge of virtually everything that whatever gun Techno was holding was surely no match for whatever was reigning terror from the woods. 

_We’re fucked. I’ve been awake for an hour and we’re already fucked._

In a burst of panic, Ranboo saw that Techno--eyes dull, focused, determined, body tense--was rising from his cover, both hands clutched around the pistol’s handle, aiming it at the woods. He fired a series of shots, each of them like a hammer within Ranboo’s skull. He bit his lip to keep from crying out, more from shock than anything else.

It was strange, how one-dimensional everything seemed. The highway before had been wide, never-ending, fearfully eternal; now, this asphalt was all he seemed to know, all he’d ever known, and all he would know. 

Techno’s shots ended abruptly; panic filled Ranboo as he processed the fact that the gun was no longer firing but clicking frantically--the clip was empty, the bullets expended. 

They were defenseless.

Techno’s eyes flickered, for a moment, and he met Ranboo’s panicked, wide-eyed gaze. 

Stay put, he seemed to say. 

And then the hellfire came pounding away again, and Techno suddenly jerked, stumbled backward, collapsed onto the concrete below him.  
Something burst within Ranboo. All regard for himself escaped him in one, adrenaline-aided exhale, and he jumped to his feet suddenly and darted over to where Techno had fallen, crouching over him with the fervor of a soldier cradling his buddy on a battlefield. 

_Some soldier I am._

“Ranboo, what are you--” Techno was staring up at him with an intense expression, but it was riddled with the grimaces of pain. The fire from the woods had ceased--for now. But it was no concern of Ranboo’s, not within this moment, suspended as they were by the tendrils of time. 

Right now, he was staring at Techno’s shirt, which had been torn open by the force of whatever bullet had punctured him. Blood was creeping slowly along the white fabric, tainting it. 

“Ranboo, get--” The words hissed out of Techno, but he cut himself off with a grimace of agony. 

“Don’t talk.” Ranboo’s hands hovered over the wound open on Techno’s stomach, which appeared to him as a bit of taboo object, something he was afraid of touching for fear that the poison of his fingers was enough to end Techno’s life forever. The fear was still being held at bay by pure adrenaline, but it was beginning to burst through, crackling through the seams bit by bit.

Wordlessly, Techno began to gesture.

He appeared to be pointing to something near his bag, which was laying abandoned near the tent. Ranboo got the message.

“Stay here,” he said, and--taking a moment to gather himself, prepare for the idea of a bullet sending him down onto the concrete--straightened, exhaled once, then dashed toward where the bag lay, abandoned. 

Thunder filled his ears; whoever was in the woods appeared to be relentless, merciless. Time slowed to a crawl. He resisted the urge to scream; instead, he kept his gaze focused on that bag. Somehow, he was able to hold out his hands and rummage within the canvas. Somehow, he felt his fingers wrap themselves around a piece of metal, a grip of some kind.

Somehow, he was able to produce one of the largest guns he’d ever seen from within.

Shock escaped him in a gasp. He held it up with some difficulty. 

It occurred to him momentarily that he had absolutely no idea how to shoot a gun.

The thunder had ceased. Ranboo took a breath.

He stood and gripped the gun, docked it within his shoulder, and aimed it toward the woods.

He let his finger caress the trigger.

But instead of shooting, he let out a bloodcurdling scream.

It ripped from his lungs like fire, scraping against his throat like something had been lodged within his chest and was trying to claw its way out of his mouth. He screamed until he ran out of breath, then opened his mouth, and began to shout.

_“I’VE GOT A GUN!!”_ He stepped forward, confidence (perhaps it was more like a crazed desire to fend off death, which was surely nipping at his heels urgently) fueling him, an utter insanity breaking free in his mind. _“DON’T SHOOT AGAIN, OR I WILL MAKE YOU WISH YOU HADN’T SHOT AT ME OR MY FRIEND AT ALL!!!!”_

And then he waited.

He waited for the hellfire to come and sweep him up into a world of immense pain, and then, eventually, darkness.

He waited to be shoved to the concrete by a rush of bullets.

But it didn’t come.

Miraculously, it didn’t come.

And the silence was louder than anything.

One moment crawled by. Then two. Three. Four.

Still nothing.

They had gone, whoever “they” had been.

Ranboo let himself exhale. He became vaguely aware of the fact that his hands were trembling madly. Slowly, he lowered the bow, his vision crossing, unfocused.

“Bruh.”

Ranboo started, glanced over at Techno, who despite his injury, was staring at him with a sort of fearful admiration.

“Well, that’s one way to do it.”

\----

It turned out that whatever injury Techno had sustained, it wasn’t fatal.

Ranboo had suggested they spend the rest of the morning in the tent, but Techno had shaken his head wryly, and pointed to one of the cars surrounding them. “Safer,” he’d insisted, gasping. Then, he’d gestured upward. “Looks like rain.”

And so here they were, with Techno sprawled in the backseat. His shirt was open, with bandages wrapped sloppily around his stomach--Ranboo’s utter lack of medical experience was something of a hindrance, but they’d marched forward vigorously. Ranboo sat in the front seat, passenger side, with most of their belongings on the floor and in the seat beside him. He hadn’t even been aware they’d had belongings--most of it was Techno’s accumulated by him over the course of the few days he’d been awake and wandering.

“If you knew these cars were unlocked,” Ranboo said, once they’d settled in and the doors had been closed, “why do you have a tent?”

“I didn’t know they were unlocked,” was Techno’s only response.

“You didn’t check?”

“Why would I check? I have a tent.”

They remained within the car as the day began to pass overhead. Rain was pattering gently upon the roof of the car. Ranboo’s adrenaline had abandoned him long ago, leaving him to discover a sharp pain in his upper arm. Upon inspection, he found that a bullet had, in fact, grazed the skin there, just missing puncturing him by a mere matter of an inch. 

And Techno’s survival was strangely miraculous. Ranboo had stopped the bleeding quite early on, so blood loss didn’t appear to be an issue, but he’d fully expected the light to go out of this stranger’s eyes quite soon. He fully expected to discover that the bullet had punctured a kidney, or some other important organ that would lead to the life leeching out of him, but that discovery didn’t come. Techno’s breathing continued, even when his eyes fluttered shut and he descended into a rickety sleep. 

Ranboo could help but feel as if they were being held by an inexplicable force of nature. There were miracles, of course, but then there were miracles.

He wondered if something was watching out for them.

He wondered if they were utterly alone.

He wondered if they’d been placed in some sort of simulation by some government scientists.

In the backseat, Techno was snoring softly; he sounded peaceful, a startling juxtaposition to the bloodied bandage around his torso. Ranboo eyed him carefully, feeling a weight settle deftly upon his shoulders.

_I didn’t ask for any of this._

He grimaced; it was unfair of him to think that way, unfair of him to feel the urge to open this car door and stumble out onto the highway and go searching for his family--assuming he had a family to stumble back to. How he hoped he did. 

But he knew with a cold sort of certainty that this was it. This was his reality: this highway, the woods, big scary guns, one-eye and a scarred face. Techno. These things made up everything he knew, and whether he liked it or not, this was where he was encapsulated, captured like a rat. 

Outside the car, the wind howled. The rain intensified, whispering to him with a ferocious vigor.

His stomach sank with a strange sort of melancholiness.

Gingerly, he reached up a finger and prodded at the bandage covering his eye. That familiar, specific fear trickled into him once again; it was strange, that fear, that inability to rip off the bandage and see for himself what was wrong with him. Perhaps he knew, on some deeper level, that it was going to pain him, that looking at his eye would only depress him further, or startle him to no end, or simply cause endless wondering about what had happened to him. 

But was that wondering worse than this wondering, this refusal of his to look at this horrible thing directly.

He wondered if it was gruesome.

He wondered if that was what scared him, or if it was something more.

Before he could stop himself, he reached up and flipped down the car’s built in mirror. The reflection flashed his charred face back at him, and he made himself stare at it, study it. The scars weren’t all that bad on their own; but the sheer quantity of them was what made them seem as though they were the result of some tragic accident, some horrid freaky thing that had befallen Ranboo some time ago. 

They snaked upwards into the bandage. He reached up, and began to pry at the edge of the gauze, feeling for any sort of pain that would indicate an injury beneath it.

There was none.

He inhaled, steeling himself, then pulled the bandage all the way back.

There was nothing but another eye. 

Of course, it was more than just his left eye, for it didn’t entirely look like an eye at all. There was no pupil, no white, nothing but a horrible, flickering shade of _red_.

Ranboo let himself blink. 

His red eye--demonic, monstrous--remained the same. 

It was strange, the way it rippled with the sunlight, for it wasn’t a solid color. It was fluid, almost, as if it were skittering with the beating of his heart. Shimmering with something.

_The eye of a monster._

Something filled his heart, then; a pang in his chest which brought a swell of emotion flittering through him. It was horrible, this confusion that was rattling around in his head. It was as if each thing Ranboo unearthed about this new and unpleasant reality got more puzzling by the minute, and the more he wished for answers, the more they eluded him.

He let himself grunt, frustrated.

Before him, the car mirror cracked. 

He stared up at his reflection, now distorted, in the spiderwebs that had appeared in the glass. His mouth fell open slightly. 

Horror and wonderment flooded him.

_My God, what am I?_


	5. Chapter 5: A Robbery and Her Defiance

“Hands where I can see them.”

Tommy felt alarm flood him, replacing the aching that had been throbbing from his shin with an adrenaline-tinted rush of fear. Shakily, he gripped his stick with one hand, and raised his other arm slowly toward the sky, as if praising some sort of God. Palm up, fingers spread. Heart pounding.

Beside him, he heard Tubbo’s breath hitch; he shot a glance over toward the rest of his travelling party. Wilbur’s expression was taut, somehow stressfully stoic. He looked surprisingly composed. Tubbo, on the other side, looked like he was about to cry. 

Both of them had their arms over their heads, hands outward. _Harmless, we’re harmless._

“Drop your weapon.”

This was directed at Wilbur; Tommy watched with a growing sense of panic as Wilbur--slowly, deliberately--reached down and removed the shotgun from his shoulder. He dropped it on the ground carefully, then flashed his empty hands toward their assailants--who were two ghostly beings, hidden partially by the forest’s thick underbrush. They wore hoods over their heads, and dark-colored masks covered the bottom halves of their faces. It was impossible to render their appearances beyond the arms of the bare trees and the heavy clothing; all Tommy could tell from where he stood, crookedly, was that one was quite tall, and the other was quite short.

But both of them were aiming guns--big guns, much scarier-looking than the weapon Wilbur had just dropped onto the soil--at the trio, with a merciless vigor to the way they were poised. 

“Look down. Eyes on the ground,” said the taller one. He had a voice like gravel--high, raspy as if he were battling some sort of cold. Tommy let his gaze flicker downward. His heart was beginning to beat wildly, slamming itself against the inside of his chest frantically. He could practically feel the air those gun barrels exuded; he could feel them looking at him, as if they had eyes and could pierce him with their deadly gaze. 

He hoped to God that he would not die like this.

Footsteps crunching solidly in the dead leaves, inching closer to them. Tommy bit his lip. 

“Don’t hurt them.” This was Wilbur, voice steady, firm. Tommy blinked, kept his gaze fixed on his tattered sneakers. “If you’re going to kill anyone, kill me.”

The footsteps stopped. “You think we’re going to kill you?”

Wilbur didn’t respond. 

The one with the raspy voice let out a laugh. “Dude, no. We’re just going to rob you.”

The footsteps started again, and Tommy flinched when he heard how close they’d gotten to him. In the corners of his vision, he sensed that one of the two was directly in front of him, looking at him. Perhaps sizing him up, preparing to beat him to a pulp or run him through with a knife. 

He bit his lip, and, against his better judgment, hissed, “I don’t have anything for you to take. They’ve got all my shit.”

“Better to be safe than sorry, then.” 

Tommy’s head snapped up at the sound of this assailant’s tone--for it was wretchedly soft, intimately cynical. And it was female.

He came face-to-face with her sharp eyes, strips of blond and black hair peeking out from within her hood. She regarded him coolly, gun held limply--almost comfortably--in her hands. 

She gestured with it to his stick, casually, too casually. “What’s that for?”

Tommy bristled. Stiffly, he said, “I hurt my leg.”

Beside them, the taller one had begun prodding at Tubbo, using the muzzle of his gun to poke the backpack dangling from his shoulder. Tubbo was rigid, frozen with his fear, still staring, wide-eyed, at the ground.

“Hey,” Tommy said, alarm flaring within him, “hey, leave him alone!”

He lurched forward, but the girl put a cold hand on his wrist, stopping him. He felt his jaw clench, teeth grinding against the frustration that was flooding him.

The taller one pulled away from Tubbo momentarily, and glanced lazily at Tommy. “I told you already,” he said, “I’m not going to hurt any of you.”

“Then what’s with the guns?” 

He shrugged, and lifted the muzzle of his gun up toward Tommy, aiming it directly at the center of his forehead. Grinning, he said, “They’re fun.”

Something in Tommy’s gut hardened. Clenching his fingers around his stick, he held the taller one’s gaze, firmly, unbreakingly, refusing to succumb to whatever sort of fear they were hoping to extract from him. The moment stretched long, scraped slowly by; finally, the taller one lowered his gun and snatched the backpack forward off of Tubbo’s shoulder and held it up, dangling it before the boy’s face. 

“You’re strange.” This was the girl; she’d taken a step back, removed her hand from his wrist, and was regarding her partner with a wry expression. “You know that? Who told you you had to tease the people you rob?”

“No one. That’s what makes it fun.” Her partner tossed her a grin beneath the mask, the corners of his eyes crinkling wickedly.

But his tone was strange; it struck Tommy as too performative, too loud and overbearing. Someone who is putting on a show. Someone throwing up a flare to provide a distraction. 

_He doesn’t seem like he knows how to shoot a gun._

_What if they’re just as lost as we are?_

The thought was enough to stir something in him, some inkling of confidence trickling into his fingertips, the endings of his nerves. He glanced over toward Wilbur, who was standing, stoic as ever, with his hands outward and his gaze fixed solidly on the ground. 

The girl approached him, nudged him with her gun (but it was a soft nudge, not the same type of mean-spirited play that her partner seemed infatuated with). “Give me that bag.”

Tommy looked at the girl’s partner, who was enthusiastically pointing his gun at Wilbur, head cocked like a fox, a dumb predator hunting elusive prey. 

Tommy let his grip tighten around his stick, and adjusted his weight.

“Hey, now, don’t do this.” The girl’s voice was silky, smooth as butter. For Wilbur hadn’t cooperated, hadn’t handed her his bag. Instead, his jaw was clenched and he was looking at her plainly, as if she were nothing more than an animal they had to pass by. His passive gaze seemed to anger her; she brought up her own gun and set the barrel of it directly between his eyes.

Tubbo whimpered audibly, and Tommy’s stomach seemed to drop out and away from beneath him. He saw Wilbur’s every muscle tense, saw his eyes widen slightly. 

“Hand me your bag,” the girl repeated, her words lithe, slow. She was shorter than Wilbur by a significant amount--it was almost comical, and it made Tommy want to laugh, incredulously--but her eyes were fire, her mouth drawn tight. 

It seemed that her disdained view of threatening those you rob had disintegrated entirely; she was all business, all mean-spirit. 

Wilbur said nothing. Only returned her fiery gaze with one of ice.

Tommy inhaled slowly, carefully; tearing his gaze away from Wilbur, he focused on the partner’s back, which was turned stupidly to him. He began to creep forward, inching, praying feverishly that no dead leaf would reveal his intentions, not now, please, not now. 

“Fine.” Beside them, the girl’s lip quirked upward; she was still looking, with a dignified smirk, at Wilbur. 

There was a click as she flipped the gun’s safety off. 

Tommy froze in his tracks. His stomach dropped out from beneath him.

Immediately, her partner seemed to bristle. He lowered his gun, and, quickly, hissed, “Niki, what are you--”

“Let me do this.” She cut him off swiftly, effectively. Reaching upward, she thrust the gun forward, letting the metal bite cordially into the skin on Wilbur’s forehead. Tommy saw Wilbur flinch, but he kept his eyes wide open, kept his mouth serenely shut. 

But there was no mistaking the fear in his eyes.

“Please don’t kill him.” Tubbo, who had been silently trembling to himself, suddenly snapped back to himself, it seemed, and had begun to plead, his eyes wide and watery. “Please don’t do that.”

Tommy remained where he was--although he wasn’t quite sure where to go from here. Horror had flooded him at the sight of the gun between Wilbur’s eyes, and it stiffened him now, sticking him to the ground and preventing his limbs from moving. 

Around them, the forest had drawn itself to a standstill, the trees watching them intently, curiously, waiting for someone to make the next move.

Niki--that was her name, what a horribly simple name--sneered, but it was gentle, more like a play-acting attempt at a sneer than the real deal. There was something soft, uncertain about it to Tommy. “Give me your bag,” she repeated, “or I’ll take it for myself.”

“Niki.” Her partner--tall, lanky, tremendously frail-looking, now that Tommy was closer to him--had dropped his gun entirely. It hung from his arm like it was a dead thing, something he no longer wanted associated or attached to him. 

Tommy bristled. 

_This is your chance._

It was an unfamiliar voice in his head, something outward poking into his cortex and urging him onward. It was strange; but it was encouraging. It was enough to fuel him forward. 

He braced himself, balancing on one foot, then began to lift his stick from the ground, doing his best not to huff with the effort of it. He brought it up, up, gripping it tightly, preparing, then--

Wilbur pulled his bag off of his shoulder and dropped it at Niki’s feet. He said nothing.

However, wordlessly, he glanced up, and met Tommy’s gaze with a ferocious sort of dignity; Tommy, who was poised with his stick held in the air, ready to bring it down mercilessly, hobbling feebly on one foot. 

Wilbur’s eyes fired at him: _do it._

And before anyone could move--before Niki had the chance to turn and follow what Wilbur was looking at, before her partner could begin to stir in the uncomfortable silence--Tommy swung his stick with all of his might and brought it down upon the tall man’s head.

It struck him just above the ear; he cried out, then went sprawling--as did Tommy, for the force of swinging the stick had knocked him completely off-balance, and he plunked headfirst into the underbrush, leaves scraping at his arms, a rock coming up to meet him squarely on the cheek. 

“Fundy!”

Niki’s screech pulled its way through the trees and beseeched them all with its horror. From the ground, leg throbbing, Tommy watched as Niki turned away from Wilbur to stare, wide-eyed, at her fallen partner--unconscious, the unwilling victim of Tommy’s walking stick.

“Take that, bitch.” It slipped out of Tommy’s mouth before he could stop it, driven by a triumphancy that was practically tangible. 

He couldn’t help his pride; he smiled sweetly at Niki, whose expression of shock was as satisfying as ever after watching her nearly pull the trigger on Wilbur. 

Wilbur. Taking advantage of this diversion, he lurched forward and snatched the gun away from Niki, as easily as if they were children play-fighting with blocks. 

He pointed her own gun directly at her forehead, no mirth or light crossing his features. He was as serious as stone; Tommy bit his lip, his momentary victory swallowed up by the moment as something like suspense poked at him uncomfortably. 

_You’re not in the clear yet._

“Checkmate.” Wilbur was breathing heavily, but from beneath his tangled hair, he flashed Niki a wink--uncharacteristic, and it nearly made Tommy burst into a fit of giggles at how out of place he looked. 

“Yeahhhh, bitch!” Tommy felt himself smile. Something warm trickled down his cheek where the rock had nicked him; he swiped at it with one hand, oblivious of the sting it presented him. 

Slowly, Niki lifted her arms above her head, eyes flickering nervously between Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo--who had his back against a tree, and looked as though he was about to suffer some sort of premature heart attack. 

“Okay. Okay,” Niki said, breathlessly, and she reached down briefly to pull her mask free from her face (and this was where Tommy saw that it wasn’t a mask, not really, but more of a scarf) and let it dangle around her neck. The lower half of her face was adorned with a spattering of scratches, deep and long and plentiful.

Tommy stared at these scratches with something like wonder. They didn't seem like they’d come from an inability to walk correctly around trees in the forest. They seemed like they’d come from something…..else. Something more sinister.

_There’s more to this world than we originally thought. There’s so much more, and we’re so unprepared._

“Here’s how this is going to work.”

Wilbur was holding the gun as steadily as he could, but Tommy could see even from where he sat that his arms were trembling heavily. He looked narrowly at Niki. “Just let us go. Alright? I’ll leave you your gun, but you’ve got to promise that you’re going to just let us be on our way.”

Niki nodded, slowly. “Okay.” 

“Yeah?” Wilbur stepped closer to her. “Or I won’t hesitate to shoot you.”

Even to Tommy, the words sounded false.

_Play-acting. We’re nothing but actors on a stage reading a script. This isn’t believable to anyone. We don’t belong here._

“Tommy, are you alright?” Wilbur flashed Tommy a brief glance, but didn’t let it linger. Niki was still an issue, still a wild card in this flush of woods.

“I’m fine.” Tommy attempted to sit up, but his leg cried out at him with a burst of sudden pain. He hissed, grunted, fell back. 

“You shouldn’t move,” said Tubbo, sullenly. His eyes were glazed over; he was staring emptily at a spot on the ground beside Tommy. Emotion seemed void within him; probably driven from him by fear.

“I’ll help you up in a second,” said Wilbur. He’d stooped to grab the bag he’d tossed at Niki. “For now, just--”

“Hold on.” Niki’s brow was furrowed. Her eyes flickered to Tommy, and her mouth parted slightly. Amid the scratches, the puzzlement--sudden and burning--was evident in her expression. “Your name is Tommy?”

“Um.” Tommy felt like a bright spotlight had been shown onto him, illuminating him uncomfortably. “Yeah?”

Niki’s eyes widened slightly. “You’re the one with the compass.”

Something seemed to falter within Tommy’s breathing; he swallowed, stared at Niki for a moment. “What?”

“Your compass.” Gone was the determination and crazed-killer look from before; now, Niki simply looked like the rest of them, lost and hopeful and ridden with a specific kind of lurking terror. Her gaze was locked solidly on Tommy, and her fingers, held stiffly in the air, twitched. 

There seemed to be pieces clinking around in Tommy’s brain, puzzle pieces he was meant to pick up and place together in order to see the bigger picture. But all he could fathom was the look on Niki’s face, her chocolate eyes wide with hope. Wilbur’s gun slowly lowering, his hair in his eyes. Tubbo’s teeth in his lips, chewing nervously, scared to move.

“Fundy and I,” Niki started, slowly, “we found one of your compasses on one of our first days out here. It has your name on the back of it?”

Tommy blinked, attempting to process. His leg was screaming at him, throbbing with a newfound pain; it had increased tenfold from before, when they were walking. “You found my compass?”

“So you know about it!” The relief that suddenly filled Niki was astounding--and also saddening. She dropped her arms, and her lips erupted into a smile. “You know who I am! And who Fundy is! And who...who…”

She trailed off, but there were tears welling in her glittering eyes. 

From the corner of his eye, Tommy could feel Wilbur’s gaze on him, boring into him. He could feel the sadness leeching from Tubbo.

“I…” Tommy wasn’t quite sure what to say. For once, words had abandoned him.

_More compasses. More people like us._

“I don’t,” he said, and it was like a pickaxe against a fragile sheet of ice, shattering that peaceful veil of delusional hope. “I don’t know any more than you.”

His voice sounded strange, quieter than it should’ve been. 

Niki’s face fell. It was like a knife to Tommy’s gut. “Oh.”

Before him, Fundy began to stir, groaning into his own scarf. 

“I’m sorry.” It fell lamely from Tommy’s lips. 

Niki shook her head, and let out a strange chuckle. The emotion had been wiped from her completely, all light drained from her complexion. “It’s not your fault.”

“Niki?” On the ground, Fundy had pulled himself into a sitting position. He’d removed his hood and mask, revealing his grimace in full. He had peculiar hair, Tommy noticed; scruffy brown, peppered and shot through with a pure, snowy white. He was rubbing at the spot above his ear where Tommy’s stick had made contact, gazing around at the group of them with wild, puzzled eyes. 

“I guess Fundy and I will be on our way, then?” Niki said, directing this as a question to Wilbur, who was still brandishing her gun.

“You don’t have to be.”

Tubbo, silent as ever, had stepped forward, wringing his hands uncomfortably as he regarded Niki, then Fundy. From the ground, Tommy could see the empathy glimmering in his friend’s eyes, the lack of cynicism, the trumping of any sort of fear. It struck Tommy as strangely in character; he didn’t remember much about his friend, but this exhibition of kindness seemed normal. Expected, even. 

It made him smile. 

“What do you mean?” Niki seemed cautious. 

“I mean, we can all stick together.” Tubbo gestured. “Why would we all be on our own, when we’re all pretty much royally fucked?”

A moment of silence, charged with tension, befell them as they considered this. The throbbing in Tommy’s leg was beginning to worsen, cutting him with its intensity seemingly every time he took a breath. He glanced wearily at Niki, at Wilbur with her gun in his hands; both of them seemed like ghosts, pale, suspended within a recounted history. It was as if they were actors, playing characters in a historical recreation of some important event, some piece of a crucial battle which had turned the tide in the winning back of a nation. As if suddenly the act would drop, and they would both take a bow, modestly gesturing to each other as if to congratulate the other on their immaculate performance.

“I think that’s wise,” said Wilbur, softly; and, abruptly, he smiled. It was an incredulous, kind smile, one that seemed to perfectly reflect the strange desperation of their situation. Delicately, he offered Niki her gun. She lowered her hands and stared at him for a moment, seeming to consider, before taking it carefully, as if it were an explosive that would fire off any moment.

“Thank you,” she said, and looked at Tubbo. “I think you’re right.”

“Who are you?” Fundy (poor Fundy; Tommy was beginning to feel guilty about possibly concussing him), looked wildly around, first at Tommy, then Tubbo. “What am I doing here? Niki?”

“Oh, Fundy.” She looked at him sadly, her gaze flickering briefly--almost accusingly--over to Tommy. Silently, she stooped and began to examine him, fingers brushing along his hairline to examine the damage that Tommy had done. 

And that was when the tension cracked.

Everything seemed to deflate, and the tight ball of anxiety in Tommy’s chest released its hold on him. He felt nauseated, suddenly; the forest around him seemed to pulsate with the pain in his leg, swimming and swooping around him, like an optical illusion meant to rouse him into a hypnosis.

_You did good, Tommy. You did what you were supposed to._

He wasn’t aware that he’d fainted until he came to consciousness again, with Wilbur and Tubbo crouching over him as if he were some interesting object they’d found while exploring the woods. 

Their faces blotted out the sky above, which was now purple with the oncoming dusk; Wilbur’s lips were moving, but his voice was garbled, the words jumbled together and clustering in the front of Tommy’s brain.

He felt sick. His face felt too hot. His leg screamed at him. 

“....awake?” Wilbur’s voice--harried and desperate--snapped into place, suddenly, and brushed itself against Tommy’s ears with a certain type of urgency.

Tommy opened his mouth to respond, and found that he couldn’t. All that escaped him was a groan. 

_Fucking hell._

Fatigue fluttered over him and grasped him tightly by the shoulders. He felt his eyelids flickering closed, felt sleep tugging at the edges of his mind. He wanted to fall into it, wanted it to swoop him up and take him away from his leg, from Wilbur and Tubbo, from the cold of the forest floor.

“Tommy.”

Someone grasped his shoulders and lurched him, shaking him, hard. His eyes snapped open and he let out another groan. Exasperation flooded him, and he let his gaze land upon Wilbur, who’s eyes were wide, poisoned with concern. 

He felt hot, but was inanely aware that he was shivering. 

He felt a hand land upon his forehead, but the colors had shifted, and all he could see were shapes and not what lay within them. “He’s burning up,” someone said. But whose voice was that? It sounded familiar, oh so familiar, and perhaps he was beginning to remember things after all. 

_Tommy, look at me._  
Head lolling, Tommy let his gaze shift, and to his surprise, it landed on something solid amid the trees. There was a man there, shaggy and clothed in strange, green robes.

He had the wings of an angel.

He was regarding Tommy with one of the kindest expressions he’d ever seen, his eyes warm and filled with something resembling a borderline despair. Pain. Guilt. Regret.

_I didn’t mean to do this to you._

_Do what?_ Tommy asked, he could feel unconsciousness raking at him again, dragging him downward into its open arms. 

The man smiled. _It will all make sense soon._

And then he was gone, with another blink of Tommy’s eyes.

Tommy felt his head begin to reel. He felt like throwing up again, but sleep was overcoming him quickly, now, and it was hard to fight. 

_I’m seein’ shit._

“Tommy? Hey, Tommy.”

Someone shook him once more--Tommy had the vague idea that it was Wilbur. There was desperation somewhere in there, but Tommy felt he couldn’t be bothered to care. All he wanted to do was sleep. All he wanted to do was--

“Tommy, you gotta stay awake.”

But he couldn’t.

Unconsciousness had his way with him, and he drifted off into its vast depths with the image of the winged man in his mind.

\-----

He awoke to the sound of voices clambering around each other in the night.

Hushed, whispered. Things passed between one and the other with the subtlety of secrets not said. He was vaguely aware that night had fallen, and that beside him, there was a fire crackling steadily. It shed its warm glow upon the blanket that had been thrown over him, and fed him its warmth heartily. 

He moved, slightly; pain pounced once again upon his leg, and he hissed, biting his lip to keep from crying out. His thoughts were horribly muddled, swimming around in his head like lost fish. He felt hot, and morbidly cold, all at the same time.

The whispers stopped. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of the crickets huddling in the darkness beyond them, creaking out a jolly tune.

Then: “Tommy? Are you awake?”

This was Wilbur’s voice, hoarse and shaky with cold.

Tommy didn’t reply, only attempted to pull himself upward, tried to get himself into a sitting position. Something like alarm was tugging at him; he was trying desperately to push through the fog that had gathered in his brain. He didn’t quite like this disorientation.

“Wilbur?” He was vaguely aware that his voice sounded terribly far away, as if it weren’t coming from his own mouth but from the mouth of someone else near him. “Wilbur, is Tubbo there? I think I need….”

He trailed off. He didn’t know what he needed. 

_Stay strong. You will soon understand._

He felt that wave of nausea wash over him again. He gritted his teeth, fighting it.

“Tommy, lay back down.” Suddenly, Wilbur was beside him, his face very close to him, eyes dark and flickering in the fire. Tommy felt a hand on his back, lowering him downward, back toward the ground, toward where consciousness would leave him once more. 

“I don’t want to.” It escaped his mouth quite before he knew what he was saying. The trees were looking at him funny. 

“You’re sick.” Wilbur said this bluntly. And it was a terrifying notion that bit into Tommy with dull teeth. Something flared within him; an image of the winged man came to him, once again, and he pushed away from Wilbur, ignoring the pain in his leg. He wanted to find him.

“No, Tommy--” Wilbur grabbed at him, his fingers pulling at his shirt, but there was a desperation roiling in Tommy, now. He felt that there was some piece of crucial knowledge dancing at the edge of the clearing they were in, attached to the winged man with a string of reason. He needed to get to it. He needed to know.

_I need to know who I am. I need to remember._

He was tired of the darkness that lurked at the edges of his memories. He was tired of looking at Tubbo and not being able to remember why he loved him so. He hated every second of being lost in these woods, of feeling held by other people and dependent upon a tall stranger with a shotgun and a beat-up guitar. 

“Tommy, you have to lay down!” 

“No!” It ripped out of his throat fiercely. “Tubbo has medicine, you can find Tubbo, he’s got medicine for me, he can fix me later, I’ve got to--I’ve got to get to him. I’ve got to get to that man--”

There was a brief, charged silence. Then: “Tommy, there’s no man.”

“Yes, there is, you’ve got to listen to me, he knows who we are! He knows where we came from, he knows--”

“Tommy, you're hallucinating. You have a fever.”  
“Wilbur, you don’t understand, there’s--he knows who we are!!” Tommy could feel tears welling in his eyes, emotion clawing at his throat. He didn’t care. The desperation was fueling him now, and he tore out of Wilbur’s grip and lurched forward, falling onto his hands and knees. His leg screamed at him. Dirt bit into his fingernails, but he had to know, he had to know--

“Tommy.” 

He felt an arm wrap around his waist, and before his mind could grasp what was happening to him he felt himself being hauled backward, yanked with a strange sort of cautiousness. He felt Wilbur place him back onto the ground, and for some reason, he didn’t fight it this time. He let himself lay back and focus on the stars flickering above him; a peculiar calmness had filled him, the desperation being chased away as suddenly as it had arrived.

Wilbur’s face floated above him, his hair hanging in his eyes as he peered downward. Concern was written all over it. 

“Leave me alone, dickhead,” Tommy heard himself mumble. His exasperation seemed manifested from nowhere; but then again, everything within him was confusing, jumbled, ridden with fever.

_Fever._

He felt a hand upon his forehead. 

“It’s gone down a bit.” Wilbur said this not to him, but to someone who was sitting across the fire. 

“That’s good.” Female voice. Sharp like a razor. It filled him with alarm, but for seemingly no reason. 

“Tommy.” Warm breath, closer to him. “Can you rest?”

“Where’s Tubbo?” It was a question. He felt horrible, leaden with invisible rocks. “He’s got medicine.”

“Tubbo’s sleeping,” said Wilbur. “And you should too.”

Seemingly against his will, as if coaxed by Wilbur’s voice, Tommy’s eyelids began to droop downward. 

_But I don’t want to sleep. I need to know._

“We’ll still be here when you wake up.” 

_But what if you aren’t?_

Tommy felt himself slipping, once again, falling backward off of that precipice and into the void. The winged man was gone, fading away with everything around him. Everything was color, shapes, tangled light, flashes of warm.

Flashes of cold.

He needed to sleep.

_I need to know._

But he stopped fighting it, suddenly, and then he was gone.


	6. The Vanishing Boy and the Skiptracing of Thoughts

Wilbur sat back, watching wearily as Tommy slipped precariously off into a fit of sleep; body growing limp, eyelids dropping downward.

He looked suddenly peaceful.

Wilbur let out a breath; he hadn’t even been aware he was holding it. He glanced down at his hands, which were trembling slightly.

“Are you okay?”

Across the fire, Niki was frowning at him. Fundy’s coat was draped around her shoulders, and she hugged it to her, a weak shield against the biting cold that the night had offered them. 

Wilbur let himself sigh. Fatigue began tugging at him fiercely; all day he’d been walking, following the arrow of a compass into the forest, an endless, expansive interloping of trees. Twigs snapping, desperately trying to keep his mind calm. 

He was tired.

But his worry for Tommy was a tangible thing. It was strange, how much he seemed to be able to care for a complete stranger. An insufferable boy with an attitude like a pungent lemon, completely opposite to Wilbur’s cold disposition. 

“I’m alright.” Wilbur stood, carefully, swaying back and forth for a moment. He wrapped his trench coat around him, tighter, and went back to sit next to Niki. They’d been stationed close to the fire, sharing its warmth, warding off the night’s chill together. 

It was also strange, how well Wilbur had been able to bond with someone who’d had a gun to his forehead just hours ago.

But Niki, despite the initial facade she’d so violently thrown up, was nice to him. Wilbur found she was like a chocolate; hard shell, but a burst of sweetness on the inside, when she broke herself open. She seemed to be driven by the common denominator of this cruel universe: fear.

And she’d apologized profusely for their initial meetup. It was something Wilbur found endlessly amusing.

It turned out that Niki and Fundy had been awake for longer than even Wilbur, having awoken together near the edge of the woods they were currently in now. They’d had supplies on them, same as Tommy and Tubbo; simply as if they’d been camping near the freeway, on a regular old retreat from the modern wares of whatever their everyday lives had been. They’d made a pact with one another; don’t trust anyone but each other, which is what inevitably led to the attempted robbery they’d pulled over Wilbur and the others. They’d been walking along the highway’s edge, following it, as the compass directed them, since they’d awoken. It seemed, still, that their pact was still holding up to a considerable extent. It was evident in the way Niki kept her gun close, despite the kindnesses Wilbur had extended to her. 

He wondered absently if she’d ever trust him completely. How could she, when Wilbur wasn’t even sure if he trusted himself?

“He doesn’t seem that bad,” she said, voice soft, a whisper over the night air. She’d pulled her hair back into a low ponytail, strips of blond peeking through a sea of raven black. 

“He was hallucinating,” said Wilbur, but there was something wrong. Something about the way Tommy had spoken to the man he claimed he was looking for, talked of him as if he were some sort of omniscient, otherworldly being. Someone who knew.

And perhaps it was the part of Wilbur that was wildly, irrationally hopeful, but he wanted to believe that Tommy had seen someone. 

He wanted to believe that someone was looking out for them.

But maybe that was stupid.

“The fever’s gone down a bit, though.” He picked up a stick from the ground and poked at the logs they’d thrown into the fire, stoking it. “It’s got to be better by morning. If not…”

He trailed off. They couldn’t afford to have him sick like that.

“He’ll be okay,” Niki said, and her tone wasn’t at all patronizing or overtly hopeful. It was matter-of-fact. As if she were simply commenting on the fact that it was nighttime, or that beside them, Tubbo was snoring softly with his bee clutched to his chest comfortably.

“Fellas, I return from the unknown.”

Wilbur, nerves already shot through with tending to Tommy’s outburst, started violently. He dropped the stick he’d been using to nudge the fire, and whirled around, hand flying to to where his shotgun lay beside him. 

But it was only Fundy, crashing through the woods surrounding the clearing, mask pulled deftly over his mouth.

His eyes landed on Wilbur, took in his tenseness, and lifted his hands up in mock surrender. “Whoa, whoa,” he said, and pulled down his mask, revealing the solid grin peeling back his lips. “It’s just me, soldier.”

Wilbur let himself relax. “Sorry.”

“You’re good.” Fundy--who’d made a full recovery from the incident with Tommy’s stick--trudged over to where Niki was situated by the fire. Reaching into his pocket, he rummaged for a bit before pulling out the compass--their version of Tommy’s--and tossing it to her. It landed sullenly in her lap. “There you go.”

Niki picked it up, examined the wavering needle. It wasn’t going haywire--and neither was Wilbur’s, for that matter. In fact, the needle was quivering steadily toward the west--toward where the highway was situated, snaking through the woods like a concrete river. 

Fundy’s white face flickered golden in the reflection of the fire. His hair was mussed (wild; it was always wild and unkempt, as if he’d been pricked with an electrical shock), white and brown and colored like the dirt. “I have some good news.”

Wilbur felt that his gaze was fixed on the compass; Niki had picked it up, and was twirling it between her hands, treating it as if it were some sort of precious artifact they’d discovered in a museum. 

“What’s your news?” he said, glancing up at Fundy, who was staring down at his jacket--which was tattered in many places--picking at it as if he were cleaning himself of something. 

Fundy let himself grin--he had a grin like a fox, wild and cunning. “There are others out there.”

Wilbur’s stomach gave a pang of sudden anxiety. Niki’s head snapped up, and she glanced up at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“What do you mean, ‘there are others?’” Wilbur found that his heart had perhaps skipped a beat or two. The prospect of him being utterly alone had already surpassed him; that had banished in the pharmacy, at the sight of Tubbo’s round eyes and shaky, sweaty hands. But the prospect of there being many more--possibly hostile, Wilbur was unsure after his unfortunate first encounter with these two--was overwhelming, at the very least. 

More people to not remember. More memories lost. More strangers to become accustomed to.

Hostility was something Wilbur had come to expect from this place he was in. 

Fundy nodded, taking in their reactions of shock, and gestured to the compass in Niki’s quivering hand. “I went down to the edge of the thing, didn’t go past the guard rail, like you said,” he said, to Wilbur. “I didn’t see or hear anything, but that thing was spinning like crazy.” 

Again, he gestured to the compass.

“So you think they’re….close to us?” Niki said this breathlessly. She’d gotten lazy with smoldering her fear in that violence. It was horribly evident now how afraid she was.

“We don’t know that they’re dangerous,” Wilbur said, and, without thinking, let his hand dust Niki’s arm. It was an attempt at offering her comfort, at extending forth his own fear, to let her know that she wasn’t alone. But she shrugged him off, her focus drawn wholly onto the compass in her hands.

Wilbur drew back his hand. _Alright, then._

“You never know,” Fundy said. He’d taken a seat next to Niki, holding his hands outward toward the fire to warm them. “I think we should be careful.”

“Well, of course we should be careful.” Wilbur felt himself bristle. There was something about the way Fundy’s tone let itself simmer that rubbed him the wrong way tonight.

Niki glanced at him, and he subdued instantly. “Would your compass act the same as ours?”

“I don’t know. He’s got it.” Wilbur gestured to Tubbo, who was twitching about in his sleep like a puppy. He’d insisted on keeping it close to him; his eyes had been wild with a particular superstition. “But I’m assuming so.” He looked to Fundy, who had drawn his knees to his chest. “You said the arrow went batshit, yeah?”

Fundy nodded without looking at him. He was studying a spot on the ground with glazed eyes. “Yeah. Whirring like a wheel.”

He demonstrated by drawing circles in the air with his finger.

“Then, yeah.” Wilbur looked back to Niki, who was running her thumb along the compass softly. Almost caressing it. “I think it’s worth following.”

Niki made a noise of acknowledgement in her throat. Fundy said nothing; he had curled himself up into a ball by the fire, and had let his eyes flutter shut.

_He’s your fox, remember?_

The voice was back, nonsensical as ever. _Very cool, voice._

But then a bolt of pain struck Wilbur, suddenly, in his gut once again; it was as sharp as ever, a piercing flicker of lightning darting between his organs and sending up a flare of agony. He doubled over, let out a sharp cry; clutching himself, he squeezed his eyes shut, red dots flaring across his vision like spatters of blood. 

“Wilbur?”

_“--don’t do that, you’re hurting me! You’re--”_

_“--I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--”_

_“--get your hands away from me! Get them--”_

_“--I’m trying to help, hold still--”_

Wilbur felt cold hands on his back, a presence growing near him, within him, filling him up with a peculiar sort of being. It was as if he was somewhere different entirely. 

_A cloth ceiling. The doors of a car._

_Dirty-blond hair. One eye bandaged, the other piercing, concerned._

And then the pain left him.

He was on the ground, laying on his back. He didn’t remember falling. Niki was bent over him, eyes wide. “Wilbur? Wilbur.”

Her hand was firm on his shoulder. The world careened around him for a moment, then crashed horribly into place. 

He let out a gasp, realized his chest was heaving. He stared up at her, a passionate fear crawling coldly up his spine.

“Wilbur.” His name sounded foreign between her lips. 

“I’m alright.” His words fluttered up and out of him; he didn’t feel attached to them. 

He felt like a ghost.

Reluctantly, Niki pulled her hand away from his shoulder, eyeing him strangely. “You’re sure?”

“Yes.” He struggled to sit up. His breath kept hitching, catching in his chest. “I’m….I’m good.”

Niki was looking at him as if he were a bomb about to detonate. “What was that?”

“I…” Wilbur glanced down, suddenly unable to meet her gaze. His cheeks flushed with a peculiar sort of embarrassment. “I don’t know,” he said, slowly. 

_What is the matter with you?_

The beginnings of a panic were tugging at him sourly. His mind began its distant whirling, thoughts blurring in front of his eyes quickly, too fast for him to pick them out and consider them in a rational light. Shakily, he got to his feet. 

“Where are you going?” Niki stood with him. Alarm flickered across her expression. “You can’t just do that.”

“Do what?” Wilbur didn’t look at her. He’d stooped to pick up his guitar and his shotgun. He slung the former over his back and began to head out of the clearing, toward the solace of the woods beyond. Presently, the thought of potential predators and things with teeth were the furthest thing from his mind. He needed to get away from that fire, from Niki’s watery eyes and her piercingly concerned stare. Each time he glanced at her, he felt the barrel between his eyes again, and it wasn’t boding well for the anxiety prickling at him now.

“You can’t just….collapse like that and then run off, and expect me not to be….you know. Concerned!” Her voice carried desperately through the trees.

Wilbur stopped and turned to look at her. She looked very small amidst the darkness, backlit against the flickering fire. 

He felt guilty.

But wariness was begging him to leave, to go and find a tree to sit against. Something to distract himself from the nagging worry that something was terribly wrong about all of this, that there was nothing he could trust and nobody he could really turn to, because who was he to judge the nature of this world? For all he knew, this was all some big joke, some simulation he’d been plucked up and placed into, with paid actors masquerading as people and pretending to help him.

_Tommy’s sick. You need to be there for him._

Horrible thoughts followed him all the way away from the clearing.

\----

Someone was shaking his shoulder. 

He drifted unsteadily upward into consciousness, light pricking at his eyes and at his pounding head. He took in his surroundings bit by bit, not quite understanding where he was; trees standing sentinel around him, an onslaught of nature bleeding before his eyes. 

He was leaning against a tree with his guitar laying faceless in his lap. Someone was to his right, hand clasping his shoulder gently.

“Wilbur?”

Tubbo’s voice, raspy with the morning. There was an urgency within it, but grogginess was still sitting heavily on Wilbur’s mind. He was still reeling with the remnants of sleep, still tailing on the end of rose-colored dreams and the hues of something….else. 

_Had the winged man been there? In your past life?_

“Wilbur.” This time, the wavering of Tubbo’s voice was evident, the emotion in it breaking through. It drove all the drowsiness from Wilbur’s head. 

He glanced up at Tubbo, and was shocked to see that there was tears shimmering in the smaller boy’s eyes--round, frightful things, trained on Wilbur as if he was unfamiliar, one of this world’s many monsters. 

“Tubbo?” Wilbur felt his brow furrow, tried to resist the anxiety that was building up within him. “What’s wrong?”

Tubbo shook his head, averted his gaze. “He’s gone,” he muttered, almost too quiet for Wilbur to hear.

“Who’s gone?”

Something charged the air around them.

Tubbo glanced back up at Wilbur, and there was grief written in every line of his expression. “Tommy.”

The world dropped away from beneath Wilbur. He felt as if he were falling, suddenly, a nauseous tumbling somersault into an unknown void of grief he didn’t even knew he possessed. “He….” He couldn’t even get the words out. “What do you mean, he’s--”

“He’s disappeared.” Tubbo’s breaths were shaky. Wilbur wished fervently he could comfort him, but there was too much shock bolting around within himself, he felt he would only make it worse. _You should comfort him. You’re the adult here._

_Tommy’s gone._

“I woke up this morning and he wasn’t there. I--” Tubbo drew himself up short, shaking his head, using his sleeve to swipe at his eyes. “I didn’t….I thought he’d gone off to use the bathroom, or-or something, I didn’t think he was….”

“Hey.” Wilbur let his hands alight on Tubbo’s shoulders; the woods around them drew closer to them, whispering the news of the disappearing boy to themselves in the form of a soft breeze. “Hey, don’t panic. I’m sure he just ran off, got lost somewhere. We’ll have to go and look for him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean--”

“Would he leave his walking stick behind?”

And to Wilbur’s utter shock, Tubbo produced the stick Tommy had been using to hobble around from behind the tree Wilbur had been sleeping against, where he’d propped it. 

It was like a slash to his heart. 

His chest tightened with panic, but he glanced up at Tubbo and said, “Are the others still at the camp?”

Tubbo nodded. “Niki and Fundy are accounted for.”

His lip was quivering. Wilbur drew himself upward, and glanced toward where he’d come crashing through the underbrush the night before. Quickly, he started forward, back toward the camp, and heard Tubbo scramble after him suddenly.

He emerged into their little clearing to find Niki and Fundy both up and milling about, prodding concernedly at their belongings. Fundy tended the fire, and didn’t glance up at Wilbur. Niki, however, fixed him with a gaze that was hard to read; she appeared to be relieved, but there was something harder behind her eyes. 

“When did you find out he was gone?” Wilbur tried to keep his tone steady. He approached the spot where Tommy had been asleep the night before. His blanket was strewn on the ground, unbearably close to the fire. Something twisted inside Wilbur.

“A couple minutes ago.” Niki pulled at a strand of her hair, watching Wilbur carefully as he surveyed the camp. “There’s no sign of him. Tubbo….Tubbo was the one who found out he was gone. He immediately woke us up.” She gestured between herself and Fundy. “And I told him he needed to go find you, and….”

She trailed off. Her expression was tight.

Wilbur ran a hand through his tangled hair. There was a panic nipping at his heels, bright and burning. It dragged with it a certain sort of guilt, and this was the kicker, for it flooded his stomach with a sickly warmth. 

_If you hadn’t been so foolish, you would’ve stayed at camp. And then maybe Tommy wouldn’t be gone._

For the fact that Tubbo was still clutching Tommy’s stick in his trembling hands meant that Tommy had not left them willingly. He’d been horribly feverish, injured. Broken. Not strong enough. 

_You left him._  
Wilbur’s fists clenched and unclenched. “Nobody heard anything?” He rounded on the group of them, Tubbo clutching Tommy’s walking stick to his chest, Niki with her hands on her hips, Fundy poking halfheartedly at the fire, eyes averted. “Nobody heard anything at all?”

“We were asleep,” said Niki, her tone defensive. “Whoever took him, they were quiet about it.”

“We don’t know that anybody took him,” Tubbo said, quietly.

“What, you think he crawled off on his own? In the state that he was in?” Wilbur fixed Tubbo with a burning gaze, and felt a twinge of guilt as the boy shrank away from him, staring at a spot on the ground. Wilbur was vaguely aware that he was being unfair, that his anger was getting the best of him. 

“You were away from camp,” Niki said. Her eyes were blazing. “Maybe if you’d stayed, you could’ve saved him.”

Something snapped within Wilbur. He felt himself shrivel, anger curling into his very bones. He raised his shotgun and aimed it at Niki’s chest. 

Everything froze. Fundy’s head snapped up, fire forgotten.

“Wilbur.” Niki spoke slowly, carefully. He was aware that she was sorting through her words, but she didn’t bristle. The scratches around her mouth were luminant in the morning light. “Wilbur, put that thing down.”

“Why?” Wilbur tried to resist the trembling that was racking him. He kept picturing Tommy’s fever-ridden eyes, his rather annoying smile being snuffed out by sickness.

“Why shouldn’t I shoot you?” he continued, and his irrationality was present in his mind. He couldn’t shoot Niki. He wasn’t that ruthless. It wasn’t in his nature. But his anger was holding him hostage. “I don’t know you. Why should I trust you? For all I know, you’re the one who took him. Maybe you’ve gotten him hidden away somewhere to keep me indebted to you.”

“You’re not making sense.” Niki’s voice was steady. Reasonable. But reason had left Wilbur in its dust. “What motive would we have?”

“I don’t know.” Wilbur’s finger itched toward the trigger.

“Wilbur.” Tubbo sounded panicked. “Wilbur, don’t.”

_I can’t shoot._

“Wilbur.” Niki let her hands flicker upwards, demonstrating her helplessness. Her innocence. “Please.” 

Her lip quivered slightly. There was a flicker of sincerity there that panged at Wilbur. _What am I doing?_

Shakily, he lowered the gun. A heaviness settled upon his heart. 

The tension released itself in the clearing; for a moment, the only noise was the sound of Fundy’s stick nudging around the fire’s smoldering embers.

“We have to look for him.” They were words, redundant and stupid sounding coming out of his mouth. He glanced at Tubbo, who was staring at him with wide eyes. The pharmacy. Of course. He’d probably frightened him.

“Of course.” Niki was beside him, suddenly, tugging the gun out of his hands. He let her do it. All of a sudden he felt very tired, despite the sleep he’d gotten against the tree. 

“We’ll look for him,” she said, her hand on his shoulder. “Okay? All of us.”

“Maybe he’s on the highway,” Fundy offered helpfully. He’d stopped stoking the fire, finally. “Maybe the compass will lead us to the people who took him.”

They all looked at Tubbo. Tubbo set Tommy’s walking stick aside--reluctantly, as if he were letting go of an old friend--and brought the compass out of the pocket of his trousers. He held it up so that it gleamed in the sun. The arrow was quivering to the left, toward the highway, toward where Fundy had returned from the previous night. 

“It’s a start,” said Niki. She backed away from Wilbur, and the concern in her eyes wasn’t lost on him. Ironic, he thought, considering the nature of how we met.

“Wilbur?” she said. “Are you going to be okay?”

He felt himself nod, although the color of everything around him had taken on a gray tint. Up until now, he’d had a bit of hope for this hellscape of a world. He’d plodded along with Tubbo and Tommy, and he’d allowed himself to imagine that despite all that was against him, it was going to be okay. That even if their memories didn’t return--even if this was some kind of personalized hell, and they were doomed within it--that they could create some kind of a life for themselves, because at least he wasn’t alone. At least he was no longer shivering on the floor of that sporting goods store, his mind cloudy with the prospect of having no one to catch him if he were to slip. 

And of course he’d allowed himself to get attached to the rowdy, ruddy-eyed boy with the attitude. He’d shouldered a responsibility, and it had slipped through his fingers like water.

_This is my fault. I wasn’t careful enough._

He felt Tubbo at his arm, and it was a little comforting, at least, to know that the boy he’d met in the pharmacy--the boy with the bee, the watery eyes, the determined set in his jaw--was still around. 

“We’ll find him,” he heard Tubbo whisper up at him. 

Wilbur didn’t respond, only set his hand atop Tubbo’s head. 

Clearing his throat, he said, “Shall we start looking?”

\-----

They trudged down to the highway at a surprisingly quick pace, Wilbur in the lead, the compass held before him like a talisman. Just as he had been holding it yesterday, following the fated arrow toward God only knew where.

He did his best not to think of Tommy. It was horrible already to know that his condition was less than ideal--extremely less than ideal--but it was even worse to know that if whoever had gotten him was hostile, it wouldn’t take much to kill him. 

Hallucinating. Blabbering. Feverish. Bad leg. The list went on and on, and each time it popped up in Wilbur’s head, he physically flinched.

Niki kept stride with him most of the time, bobbing along at his elbow like a forest sprite. She was studiously quiet; behind her, Fundy prodded along at a strange pace, stopping occasionally to examine plants he found peculiar looking, or the trunk of a tree that happened to catch his attention. 

And Tubbo, face drawn tight with a lack of emotion. He held his bee to his chest dutifully, eyes hard, using Tommy’s walking stick to poke along at the ground. He was uncharacteristically quiet, almost eerily so; but really, what was there to say?

When the group reached the highway’s asphalt, it was as if the world around them shifted in a miniscule, obscure way; Wilbur felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, as the arrow of the compass began to spin wildly--just as Fundy had said it would. 

_Who was out here?_

“What happened here?” Niki breathed, hauling herself over the guardrail that lined the highway’s edges--Wilbur had taken her hand and helped her with the jump. Her eyes were wide as she took in the vast amount of cars, abandoned in their places. Some of the doors were dangling open, the interiors utterly and uselessly exposed to the relentless outdoors. 

The group stopped for a moment, taking in the eeriness of the strip of road. There was no one here, it seemed, for miles and miles.

“Apocalypse,” Fundy muttered, swiping at his nose--he’d contracted some kind of cold due to the frigid nature of the weather. 

“Armageddon,” Tubbo added, under his breath. His eyes were blank as he took in the emptied cars.

Wilbur glanced down at the compass, which had begun to spin wildly once more. He tapped it once, and the arrow settled, pointing steadily to their left. 

“This way,” he said, and felt like a ghost in his own body, an imposter in the role he’d been assigned to play. They were all looking at him with hopeful eyes, curious eyes; eyes that were lost, that begged to be led somewhere. They wished for him to lead, happy to fall in step with him at the stern of whatever ship they were sailing, whether it be into oblivion or treacherously split waters. 

And boy, did the waters seem treacherous. 

He started forward, and they fell into step around him. He found himself missing the sound of Tommy’s labored breathing as he heaved himself along; the occasional random thought, bubbling to the surface of his lips as if it were a helium-filled thing. 

_I should never have stormed off._

They trudged along the highway, the sky stretching up and before them, guiding them. The compass continued to lead them; and Wilbur found that he was watching it fervently, with an almost feverish desperation. He didn’t know if it would lead them to Tommy, but perhaps it would at least lead to more answers. A way out. 

_Who we are._

They walked for an hour or so, letting the arrow guide them. Their footsteps were rhythmic on the asphalt, boots clomping, scraping along. Wilbur could feel the sun peering down at them curiously; the clouds had split, giving them a glorious break in the rain. 

Fundy and Tubbo made conversation with each other, low and meaningless. They played I-Spy for an incredulous amount of time, then moved on to an attempt at a verbal game of cards--which, Wilbur could tell before they even began, that that wasn’t going to work. He preferred silence, with Niki maintaining a steady pace at his elbow. 

He found that he liked having her next to him. Her presence stilled his panic, calmed his jittering nerves with a single, accidental brush of her arm. 

He wondered where that inner peace with her was coming from.

They walked for a while, occasionally stopping to drink from Fundy’s thermos, before they came across the smoke in the sky.

Fatigue was beginning to plague them once more; Tubbo had put up his bee, and was beginning to lean heavily on Tommy’s walking stick. He’d fallen frighteningly quiet again; it was obvious that his mind had once again been infiltrated by dark thoughts. 

Wilbur had fallen back to walk next to him. He lifted a hand to put it on Tubbo’s shoulder, but thought against it at the last second. Instead, he said, “We’ll find him.”

It came out with more certainty than he felt. Tubbo didn’t look at him, only continued onward. 

After a moment, he said, “I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

“Why not?”

Tubbo shrugged. “Because if I get my hopes up, we won’t find him.”

“That’s not a positive way to think.” 

Tubbo looked up at him. “None of this is positive, is it?”

Wilbur was startled by the bite in his tone. He opened his mouth, about to retort in defense of his wounded pride, but before he could, there came a sound from within Niki’s throat; a surprised, almost strangled sound, reeking of shock. 

Wilbur glanced at her, saw that she had stopped in her tracks. Fundy was beside her; both of their heads were tilted upward, toward the sky. Painting it a peculiar shade of gray was a trail of smoke, seeping from some fire a little ways down the road before them. 

Wilbur looked down at his compass. The arrow was spinning wildly.

He drew in a breath, chest tightening.

There was something in the feel of this camp, abandoned and cruel, twisting conspiratorially in the air. 

Wilbur unslung his shotgun and flipped off the safety. From the corner of his eye, he saw Niki do the same.

_Please be here, Tommy._

Wilbur drew in a breath, then said to the camp, “If there’s anyone here, come out with your hands where we can see them.”

He felt Fundy tense behind him, preparing for a potential fight. For a moment, nothing moved; the highway seemed to breathe beneath them, offering its incredulity and endless cruelty. 

Then, just as Wilbur was considering lowering his gun and continuing onward--perhaps raiding what supplies were surely hidden here, fending off the disappointment that was flooding him at not having found Tommy--there came a noise from behind one of the abandoned cars.

“Don’t shoot. Please.”

Wilbur’s grip tightened on the gun. His heart began to pound briskly as a figure moved from the shadows behind the car, creeping forward. It rose from its crouch and came to stand, a man of a loping nature, stooped, taller than even Wilbur. 

But then the man’s fear became evident, and his true image shuddered into place; for despite his unruly height, he couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.  
He raised his hands toward the sky, hair wild and hanging in his eyes--well, Wilbur thought, what’s left of his eyes. One of them was bandaged, plastered over with white gauze. The kid’s face was turned toward the ground; but Wilbur could still see that beneath the hidden eye was the face of a monster; for it was butchered and crawling with scars, roping and thick and ugly. 

A bristle of recognition shuddered through Wilbur, followed by an instant dash of confusion. _I’ve seen this kid before. But where?_

There was a moment of weighted silence, and it suddenly occurred to Wilbur that the others were all staring at him. They were waiting for him to speak.

But something had dislodged within him. Something felt suddenly loose and rattled within his mind. His grip on his gun was sweaty, uncertain. He cleared his throat, trying to focus. 

“Drop all your weapons,” he said, and heard--with an inward flinch--his voice crack with his words. 

“I don’t have any,” said the kid, trembling. 

“Are you alone?”

There was just the briefest hesitation before the kid answered. “Yes.”

Wilbur felt his eye twitch. He’d caught that snag in his speech, that chip of emotion before the word had left his lips. His one visible eye was shifting wildly, darting between unseen points on the ground before him. 

There was a moment of silence, before Wilbur said, “Are you sure?”

The kid nodded, but it was a guilty sort of movement. “I’m alone, now.”

“What do you mean, ‘now?’’

And this was when the kid glanced up, his eye watery and filled with a familiar, sharpened fear. It was the same glint that had backlit Tubbo’s eyes in the pharmacy. It was the look of a cornered rabbit, someone who’d been shackled to a situation they had no idea how to claw their way out of.

“Someone took him.” The kid’s voice broke. He lowered his hands, letting them drop to his sides like dead weights. “I woke up this morning, and he was just….gone.”  
“Who?” Wilbur pressed gently, and was surprised at how soft his own voice had suddenly become. 

“My….he’s the one who saved me, I think. He dragged me….” The kid shook his head. He swallowed loudly, then met Wilbur’s gaze with a new sort of determination. “I’m alone,” he repeated, “please don’t shoot.”

And so Wilbur lowered his gun. If this was a trap, it was a damn good one, but that anxiety wasn’t tugging at him anymore. All that prickled at him now was an overwhelming sense of sympathy. _This kid looks not much older than Tommy._

Slinging his gun back over his shoulder, Wilbur offered forth a hand. “I’m Wilbur.”

The kid’s lips quirked upward slightly, and he reached out and shook Wilbur’s hand--his fingers were eerily warm. “Ranboo.”

Wilbur took a step back, and gestured to the rest of his miscellaneous company in succession. “Niki, Fundy, Tubbo,” he said--and was surprised to see that Tubbo had somehow appeared beside him, and was staring up at Ranboo with a curious, almost childlike expression of wonderment. 

“What happened to your eye?” he asked.

Wilbur bristled with embarrassment. “Tubbo.”

“What?” Tubbo shot him a look. “I’m just asking.”

“It’s okay,” said Ranboo, and all he did was shake his head again, not meeting anyone’s gaze. He was vacant, Wilbur realized. There was something about him that wasn’t entirely there, that was lodged in some cloudy space between his lips and his mind. “I don’t remember. Apparently, that happened….before.”

Tubbo nodded, as if he understood. “Well, you look cool.”

Niki stepped forward, breaching Wilbur’s other shoulder. “Ranboo, would you like to stick with us?”

Ranboo looked startled at this; Wilbur glanced, surprised, at Niki. Her jaw was set, expression kind. It seemed she’d used all her hostility up on Wilbur. 

“I….” Ranboo, wringing his hands together, took a step back. “I don’t want to be any trouble, and--”

“It’s no trouble,” Niki insisted.

“No, it’s just….I know he was taken.” Ranboo blew out a breath of air between his lips. “He was hurt, not bad, but still….he couldn’t have run off, he left all his stuff.”

From the corner of Wilbur’s eye, he saw Tubbo’s grip tighten on Tommy’s stick.

“You want to be here for him in case he comes back,” Wilbur said, once again surprising himself with the gentleness of his tone.

Ranboo nodded, bobbing his head up and down almost monotonously. But even he looked skeptical of his own reasoning. It was clear he knew, as Tubbo had known, that in this world, people didn’t just leave. 

Especially not when they were hurt. 

“One of ours is missing, too.” Tubbo’s voice was soft, so vulnerably fluttering that Wilbur felt he could reach out and put a hand through his words. He glanced over at Tubbo, who was still gazing up at Ranboo; that childlike wonderment had melted into a tangible sympathy. “We found him gone this morning. We were looking for him.”

At this, Tubbo met Wilbur’s gaze, and Wilbur felt his heart give an uncomfortable lurch. He nodded, confirming. He was weary of Niki’s presence on his other side, Fundy’s piercing eyes behind him. 

“You wouldn’t happen to…..see him? Tall, blond hair, blue eyes?” Wilbur said this tentatively, peering at Ranboo carefully, cautious to let himself hope. 

But of course, Ranboo shook his head. “No. Sorry.”

The day was growing cold. Wilbur felt something shrivel within him, more so than it had when Tubbo had touched his shoulder that morning. Ranboo was no different than them. He was simply another victim of this world and its cruelties, left to rot by his lack of memory. Those scars must be something of a burden he was laden with, a constant reminder of what he’d lost. 

But it was quickly becoming evident that despite what they’d lost already, they could always lose more.

_You’re colder than usual,_ said the voice.

_Shut up,_ said Wilbur. 

And then it clicked.

The car. The one eye. The stabbing within his stomach, the pain that had driven him to the ground beside the fire. Ranboo’s face. 

_Ranboo._

He remembered feeling as if he were in another person’s body.

Ranboo.

“We can stay here with you for a bit, if you like,” Niki was saying, and she’d stepped forward and laid a gentle hand on Ranboo’s thin shoulder, her hair fluttering in the breeze. Wilbur saw Ranboo smile down at her--his height really was extraordinary--and felt his stomach lurch with a sickening velocity. 

_Something is happening to me._

_Something’s not right._

_Come meet me,_ said the voice. 

He was falling before he knew what was happening. His head met the concrete with an unpleasant thump, and unconsciousness washed over him with a wet ferocity.


End file.
